


Feed Me, Richie!

by Amuly



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Canon Gay Character, Emetophobia, First Kiss, Fix-It, Little Shop of Horrors References, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slurs, Stabbing, Violence, Vomiting, Zombeddie, Zombie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26243524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: Richie awoke with a jolt, fight-or-flight instincts kicked into overdrive, heart pounding in his chest like it was going to pop. He scrambled in confusion, not sure where he was, not sure who he was, fumbling around for his glasses on a nightstand that wasn’t his in a frantic attempt to bring the world around him into focus. When he finally slipped them on, the crack in the left lens brought the memories crashing back over him. He was in Derry. He’d lost Eddie. And he was on a shitty mattress, holding Eddie’s sweatpants, wearing Eddie’s hoodie.And Eddie was standing in his hotel room.Or, the one where Eddie comes back as a zombie and Richie falls hard into that "Little Shop of Horrors" lifestyle.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 66
Kudos: 192
Collections: Monster Reddie





	Feed Me, Richie!

**Author's Note:**

> INCREDIBLE art by [Sharki](https://twitter.com/TheArtSharki), go give her ALL the love!!

It happened when Richie was asleep.

He hadn’t thought he would fall asleep. Hadn’t believed it was possible, with the adrenaline of the last day and night, and the raw pain and grief that had torn open his chest like a demon clown-spider’s claw.

_Why had it had a claw? It didn’t even make sense. It was a clown. It was a spider. Neither one of those things had giant fucking spearing claws._

_Did some spiders have claws? Stan would know that._

_Stan_ -

But Richie _had_ fallen asleep. It had been more than twenty-four hours since that restless first night in Derry, which had hardly been a solid six hours’ sleep, much less a solid eight. He showered the quarry water out of his hair, threw his clothes into the too-small bathroom trashcan, and sat down on the floor in front of an open suitcase.

Eddie’s suitcase.

His clothes smelled like him. Richie found himself tugging out a hoodie and sweatpants, pressed his face into the hoodie. The sweatpants were too small to wear, and the hoodie kind of was, too, but Richie tugged it on anyway, and pulled on his own pair of boxers. The sweatpants he cradled in his arms, rested his head against it, as he laid down on the bed. He was just going to close his eyes for a second, just lay there, smelling like Eddie, imaging he was just in the bathroom, he was just downstairs, he’d burst through the door in a minute, yelling at Richie for messing up his perfectly-packed suitcase, arguing about airlines and flights back, bitching about Richie blowing up his phone with stupid texts and rummaging through his toiletries for his melatonin and Xanax and alpha-blockers and whatever the fuck else he took before bed.

But it was then, between one breath and the next, that Richie fell asleep.

He didn’t really dream, he didn’t think. Disjointed memories, brain sifting through the horrors of the day. But not _dreams_. Just sorting. The kid he passed on the street’s face: forgotten. The color of the third house on the left: throw that out. Eddie’s face above him, blood spilling from his mouth: keep that. The sick pallor of Eddie’s skin the last time Richie touched it, cheek rough and cold beneath his fingers: oh, keep that, keep that forever. _We’re never going to let you forget that, Richie._

Richie awoke with a jolt, fight-or-flight instincts kicked into overdrive, heart pounding in his chest like it was going to pop. He scrambled in confusion, not sure where he was, not sure who he was, fumbling around for his glasses on a nightstand that wasn’t his in a frantic attempt to bring the world around him into focus. When he finally slipped them on, the crack in the left lens brought the memories crashing back over him. He was in Derry. He’d lost Eddie. And he was on a shitty mattress, holding Eddie’s sweatpants, wearing Eddie’s hoodie.

And Eddie was standing in his hotel room.

Richie’s voice cracked. “Eddie?”

It was dark. Richie must have slept through the rest of the day. But he hadn’t closed the curtains, and the streetlights, even weak as they were, still illuminated Richie’s room enough that he could clearly see: it was Eddie. Grimy, covered in sewage and muck, shirt still… Richie fought down a gag. But standing. _Standing_.

“Eddie!”

Richie rushed forward, reaching for him. But he pulled up short.

Eddie was just… standing there. Swaying a little on his feet. He was looking at Richie, at least, but his eyes were… _don’t think it, don’t think it, don’t you_ dare _think it_ \- When Richie dared to glance back down at his stomach, he could see it was still… fuck, fuck.

“Eddie, man, we got to get you to a hospital, come on, we’re-” Richie reached for Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie surged back, a low moan rising from his throat until it was nearly a shout. His arms flailed, Richie rearing back to avoid getting smacked in the face. They were so dirty, Eddie was so _dirty_ , he couldn’t possibly be comfortable like this. Not Eddie.

But Eddie was backing into the wall of Richie’s room, still moaning. Richie pulled his hands back to his chest, spread them out. “Okay, okay, hey. Hey, Eddie: no hospital. Okay?” _Maybe it was fucking magic or something? Derry magic? Maybe Eddie was fine, maybe he was all healed up under his blood-and-organ-stained shirt?_ “Eddie?”

Richie had gotten close enough to touch, but he held back, kept his hands to himself. Eddie was watching him (those eyes, those eyes, they weren’t-) cautiously. Then, slowly, Eddie peeled himself off the wall… and folded himself against Richie’s chest.

Automatically Richie’s arms went up and around him, holding him close. He ignored the tacky feeling of still-wet blood, fingers skittering nervously around the edges of the torn hoodie, _don’t feel what’s there, don’t feel for the hole in the hoodie, don’t touch the hole underneath, don’t feel how deep it might go…_

Eddie relaxed against his chest. Tears fell from Richie’s eyes and he tried to control the gasping, sobbing breaths that fought to escape his throat.

“Okay, it’s okay, you’re okay, buddy.” Richie kept talking, nonsensically. His hands rubbed up and down Eddie’s back on either side of the center, avoiding it like it was Schrödinger’s box. If he didn’t open it, if he didn’t observe it, he could be Schrödinger’s Eddie. Alive and… _don’t think it don’t say it don’t name it_ -

“How about we get you cleaned up, huh? You’ve got to be de-” Richie choked on the word “-want to get out of those clothes. C’mon, buddy.”

Somehow Richie managed to steer Eddie to the bathroom, though once they were in there Richie hesitated. If he turned on the light… if Eddie stripped… Richie swallowed.

He wasn’t going to vanish. He could _feel_ Eddie beneath his hands. Eddie was _real_ , he was _solid_ , he was _there_. Richie couldn’t hold his breath forever.

Richie turned on the light, and Eddie flinched and growled a little, but then settled.

He looked… bad. Really fucking bad. Skin as ashen as Richie had seen it last, if not even worse. Covered in blood and, fuck, pieces of his own guts, mud, shit, whatever the fuck else he’d picked up crawling his way out of the sewers and back to Richie.

The hole in his hoodie didn’t stop at his hoodie or shirt. It went through him. Richie could see his fucking spine.

This was fucked up. This was _bad_. Either Richie had to get Eddie to a hospital _now_ because the poor guy was in _shock_ and about to drop dead at Richie’s feet in this shitty little Derry Inn bathroom, or…

Richie ground his teeth. Fuck that ‘or.’ This was mother fucking _Derry_. Weirder things had happened. Eddie was _fine_. Just needed a little TLC. They’d figure it out. Together.

“Okay, bud. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Richie moved carefully, like he was tending to a wounded animal. But Eddie stayed still for the most part, submitting to Richie’s careful hands as he stripped Eddie of his hoodie, shirt, belt, pants, briefs, shoes, socks.

Richie put his face into his arm and gagged at the gaping, dripping wound through the center of Eddie’s body. It wasn’t _bleeding_ so much anymore (which was… good? Or _really_ bad?) as it was just… oozing a little. Worse was the way it looked like it was threatening to spill out Eddie’s literal, actual guts every time he moved.

It wasn’t something Richie could look at for long. Clumsily he edged past Eddie to grab at the tap, stopping up the tub and turning the water on to fill it.

“Okay, here we go. Why don’t you get in-”

Eddie stared down at the tub. After a moment Richie reached out to nudge him towards it. Eddie growled, which Richie ignored, because the fucker was leaking organs and sewage and there was no way that Eddie in his right mind would want to live another _second_ like that. Gingerly, because Eddie’s fucking _organs_ were peeking out, Richie bent to lift Eddie’s leg, guiding it into the tub.

When his foot hit the water Eddie let out deep, monstrous scream, howling and jerking backwards. Richie grabbed him on instinct, just to keep him from falling over onto the tile floor. Eddie struggled in his grip, body flailing, sewage making his skin slick and difficult for Richie to get any traction on. Richie dug in, grabbing him by his biceps, wrapping his hands almost all the way around.

“Eddie!”

Eddie screamed that low, beastly scream again.

Richie shoved forward, practically tackling Eddie into the tub. Eddie screamed some more, and Richie fell against his back, the _hole_ in his back. Richie swore he could feel his spine. Like, his _actual spine bones_ ( _vertebrae, you moron_ ), because there was a fucking _hole_ through his _back_.

“Stop struggling you fucking asshole! You’re going to knock your fucking spleen out!”

The water sloshed around them, Eddie spazzing out like it was acid. Richie grabbed for the showerhead, finally flipping it on, stopping the water pouring into the tub. Now it sprayed out of the showerhead, which Richie pointed directly at Eddie’s face. Eddie howled and snapped at the water.

“Calm down you fucking turd!”

Eddie’s jaw snapped, teeth biting at the water. Richie growled and turned Eddie over so he was lying down in the tub, head cricked up at an angle against the edge. Richie slung his thighs over Eddie’s hips, pinning him in place. Whatever weird, Derry-magic, trauma-shock state Eddie was in, it didn’t give him fifty extra pounds of weight or six inches in height, so Richie was still able to overpower him in an emergency. Like right the fuck now was, apparently.

With the showerhead gripped in one hand, Richie grabbed for the soap with the other. The showerhead spray slipped, spraying down at Eddie’s neck and collarbones. Eddie grunted at the new stimulus, staring down at his own chest blankly. He jerked his neck down, bobbing his head to bite at the water again. Richie took a deep breath to steady himself.

“I’m just going to clean the fucking staph infection off you, okay dumbass?” Richie told him. Moving slowly, Richie lowered the soap to Eddie’s forearm. Eddie followed the movement with his jaundiced eyes. When the soap touched his skin, Eddie yanked away and screamed again.

“It’s fucking soap!” Richie told him, struggling to keep him pinned down. “You fucking love soap! Soap, good!”

Eddie screamed and thrashed. Grunting to himself, Richie gave up on slow and steady and just started scrubbing Eddie down as fast as he could.

“This is _your_ fucking hoodie I’m wearing, you know!” Richie shouted at him as he scrubbed the filth and blood from his arms. “You’re ruining your own fucking clothes right now!”

Eddie continued thrashing around like he couldn’t hear him.

In a kind of backwards way, Eddie’s fit helped Richie get through the whole process, because he didn’t have time to fucking _think_ about it. As Eddie jerked and howled and snapped his teeth beneath him, Richie scrubbed his chest, including the fucking gaping hole through his torso, water in the tub brown and black with all the muck coming off him. As Richie made progress, scrubbing his arms, his legs, his fucking dick (not the way he ever wanted to do this, not sexual _at all_ : not when Eddie was leaking intestines and trying to bite his hand off), the water slowly ran lighter, turning grey, pink. By the time Richie rolled Eddie onto his back the worst of the sewage was down the drain. Still, Richie scrubbed every inch of him, from the top of his hair to the bottoms of his feet.

Finally Richie turned the water off and collapsed backwards out of the tub. He was soaking fucking wet, his boxers and Eddie’s hoodie probably a lost cause for good. Panting, Richie stripped out of the soaked clothes and dumped them on top of the wastebasket that still held his _other_ set of sewage-and-bloodstained clothes from that morning.

In tub, Eddie had gone quiet. Richie scrubbed a hand through his hair and stared down at him. Eddie was looking around the tub curiously, hands batting at the sides and slipping down. Richie’s irritation softened. Eddie’s hair was flat on his head, dripping water. His stomach was still… fuck. But it didn’t look quite as bad with all the blood washed off it. It still looked fucking awful, but it wasn’t bleeding, or leaking organs. If they slapped a bandage over it—a really, really _big_ bandage—Eddie could almost look passable. That wouldn’t fix whatever fucking internal damage was going on in there, but maybe, Derry magic rules? If they just _believed_ it was going to get better, and didn’t acknowledge it was there, it could get better?

Eddie found the soap that Richie had dropped in the tub. Curiously he lifted it, bloodshot eyes examining it. Maybe he had just wanted to do it himself, and not known how to tell Richie to back the fuck off?

Eddie took a bite out of the soap.

“Fuck, no, you fucking-” Richie jumped forward and grabbed the soap out of his hands. “Spit it out!” Richie grabbed the sides of Eddie’s jaw and pinched. “Spit it out, spit it out!” Eddie started to growl and thrash again. “No, spit it out!” Eddie screamed in the back of his throat. “Spit it out you fucking maniac!”

Thirty minutes later, Eddie was curled up on the bed, cuddling a towel to his chest. Richie sat down on the floor and put his head in his hands.

O. Kay.

Okay.

So. Eddie was back.

Richie lifted his head and stared at Eddie, gnawing lightly at the towel. He was staring back at Richie with those… eyes.

He didn’t blink. It took Richie a few minutes to realize it. Eddie wasn’t blinking.

Okay.

* * *

“We’ve got to get some food in you,” Richie told Eddie, the next morning.

He didn’t want to leave him. He also needed like, fucking bandages and shit for his gaping stab wound torso, plus the smaller stab wound in his cheek that needed a new bandage after the old one had fallen off during the great shower debacle of last night.

Eddie didn’t respond. Richie had figured that out, overnight. Eddie didn’t talk. Okay, sure: it was the trauma. Guy probably had fucking amnesia or some shit. Reverted to like, feral toddler. That was fine. Richie could work with that. Eddie probably just needed some time. PT, but for his brain. Uh, there was probably a word for that. If Richie had listened to Steve a decade ago and moved out to LA, he’d probably know the word. But the Chicago comedic scene was much more into self-medicating than therapy, so Richie didn’t fucking know.

He probably should bandage up Eddie’s torso _before_ he tried to feed him, otherwise the food might… uh… fall out.

Richie thumbed open Fiverr on his phone and put in an order for way more medical supplies than he’d probably know what to do with. But he was trying to think like Eddie. Like Eddie _would’ve_ thought, if the poor fucker was in his right mind. Bandages, antiseptic, medical tape. Superglue. Richie considered stiches, or at least needle and thread, but he was pretty sure after the shower incident there was no way Eddie was just going to lie there while Richie sewed up his stomach and back. He was going to be lucky if he got the bandages on him.

That order in, Richie opened up GrubHub next and started scanning for restaurants. What would Eddie want to eat? What _should_ he eat? Inanely, Richie’s mind kept coming around to soup. Soup, he should give Eddie soup, that’s what you fed sick people, you fed sick people soup, and that made them better. Richie glanced up and met Eddie’s eyes again. Eddie gnawed rhythmically at the towel and stared at Richie. It wasn’t clear if he was seeing Richie or if his eyes were just… pointed that direction.

Soup. Soup would be good. Chicken noodle. No, wait: Eddie had talked some shit about being allergic to gluten. Little hypochondriac probably thought he was lactose intolerant too. Okay, what bland bullshit health-food soup would Eddie order for himself. No chowders, probably, right? No noodles. Veggies. Chock full of veggies. Vegetable fucking medley. A gallon of it.

Essential orders complete, Richie sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. Eddie was still staring at him. Or in his direction.

“Eddie?”

Nothing.

Richie sighed and tapped his phone against the ground. It was okay. It would be okay. They’d figure this out.

* * *

“Eat it!”

Eddie screamed.

“Eat it, you fucking asshole!”

Eddie howled.

They had started out sitting on the bed, like fucking civilized people. Eddie had actually let Richie wrap bandages around his entire damn torso with minimal struggle (aside from a stray elbow to the eye, which, great, now Richie looked like he’d gotten into a _fight_ , when he was trying to avoid drawing attention to himself in the wake of _murdering a dude with an axe_ ) and Richie thought, okay, maybe things were getting better. Maybe the shock/amnesia/clown magic/whatever the hell was wearing off and Eddie was slowly getting his senses back.

And then Richie had opened a tub of soup and tried to press a spoonful into Eddie’s mouth.

“You haven’t eaten in like two days!” Richie shouted, trying to pour another mouthful down Eddie’s throat. He’d given up the plastic spoon as a lost—and potentially _dangerous_ —cause a while ago and now was holding the liter of soup with one hand and trying to pry Eddie’s jaw open with the other. “Shit-water doesn’t count! Eat the fucking soup!”

Eddie screamed some more, thrashing from side to side so violently that he managed to wrench his jaw free of Richie’s grip. Quickly Richie slapped his hand back down, struggling regain his leverage.

“It’s fucking gluten free! It’s vegetable medley! No nuts no dairy no fucking _anything_ , you rabid honey badger, now eat it!!”

Eddie screamed. Richie took his opportunity and poured some soup down his throat.

Suddenly, Eddie went still beneath him. Richie almost fell off him in shock. Eddie wasn’t looking at him, not exactly, but his eyes were fixed in a vaguely upwards direction, towards the space Richie occupied. Richie could see his throat working, Adam’s apple bobbing. Maybe…?

And then Eddie heaved. And heaved again.

“Oh shit-”

Richie rolled off Eddie just in time to let him lean over the side of the bed and projectile vomit. All the soup came up—the small amount Richie had managed to squeeze down his throat—as well as a terrible, foul-smelling, black bile.

Eddie rolled away from Richie and crawled back to the other side of the bed. He curled up in a ball and turned his back to Richie.

Richie stared at the black substance on the ground, that Eddie had just purged from his system.

“Well no wonder you hurled,” Richie joked, voice thin and reedy even to his own ears. “I would too if the Chernobyl tar pits had- nope-”

Richie ran for the bathroom, puking out his own guts into the toilet. _At least mine is metaphorical ah fuck-_ He puked some more.

He sat on the floor, head pressed to the toilet seat, wiping sweat from his upper lip.

The black bile. He’d seen that before. He’d seen that come out of _Eddie_ before. Twenty-seven years ago, in a house of horrors. Two days ago, in the same house.

But what’d he expect? Eddie was alive (…), after getting speared through and through by an alien spider-clown. Of course there’d be some… lingering effects. But if the power of belief and love and whatever the fuck had killed the monsters, then same rules had to apply to Eddie getting better, right? Just believe he was alive, and okay, and he’d be back to his normal self in no time, screaming and swearing at Richie and giving him shit for wrapping his bandages all wrong or scrubbing his dick for him or something.

They just needed time, was all.

In the other room Richie’s phone started ringing. He ignored it as he stuck his head under the tap and gargled some water. By the time he came out it had stopped, missed call but no voicemail. Eddie was still curled up on the other side of the bed. Sidestepping the bile on the floor, Richie grabbed some tissues from the nightstand and moved around to Eddie’s side of the bed. Eddie’s eyes were open, but he didn’t react as Richie squatted down in front of him. Richie sighed and reached out, tentatively, to card a hand through Eddie’s hair. He didn’t react, and Richie let himself brush the lightly-curling, shower-soft hair back from his forehead. He hadn’t gotten to see Eddie like this, with his hair uncombed and dry (plastered against his face from sewer water and sweat didn’t count). It made him look young. Like the boy he’d known twenty-seven years ago.

Gingerly Richie wiped any remnants of bile up from around Eddie’s mouth with the tissues. Eddie’s mouth fell open after a moment. Then he tried to gnaw at the tissues.

“No, Eddie, come on,” Richie sighed. He managed to extract the soiled tissues from Eddie, who didn’t seem really interested in eating them. It was more like a reflex.

When Richie was heading back into the bathroom to find something more substantial to wipe up the black bile on the floor, he caught sight of the missed call notification on his phone. 212 area code. Richie swiped it away—robocall. Below that, snapping up to the top of his notifications, were a batch of texts from the Losers.

 _Just landed in LA_.

_Got into Albany._

_Still remember you guys!_

_You head out yet, Mikey?_

_Going to take a few weeks, but don’t worry, I’m getting there._

_Let us know if you need anything._

_Anybody here from Richie?_

Richie considered his phone in his palm. The Losers… could they help with this? Should he tell them?

_What if they were scared of Eddie? What if they thought he was evil, he was It, what if they told Richie to kill him? What if this was because Richie never fessed up, Eddie was back because Richie never faced his fears, because no one but some Chicago twinks know his dirty little secret, what if-_

Richie cleared the texts and made a note to reply later. When he got back to Chicago. He glanced at the bed, where Eddie was lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. Of course, that was dependent on him successfully _getting_ to Chicago.

Well, shit.

* * *

Richie stared down at Eddie, hands on his fucking hips and about one step away from tapping his foot like a fucking cartoon character. Eddie was curled up on the bed, but at least he was facing Richie now, arms wrapped around that same towel Richie had dried him off with a day ago. He was sucking on it lightly, like a dog with a comfort stuffed animal. Richie lifted a hand to wiped it down his face, over his mouth. He tucked it under his chin, wrapping his other arm around his chest so he could rest his elbow on it.

“Okay. We’re going to Weekend-at-Bernie’s this shit.”

Eddie’s yellowed eyes stared, unblinking, in Richie’s general direction. Richie clapped his hands together.

“Let’s fucking do this.”

Eddie had TSA pre-check, because of course he did, and Richie did, because he was a fucking celebrity, thank you, _bitches_. Richie figured, two first class tickets, he wouldn’t have to worry about Eddie gnawing on some stranger’s shoulders midway through the flight. Sunglasses fucking _on_ , hats _down_ , Richie pulled this shit every fucking time he traveled, it’d be a breeze.

Eddie submitted without protest to Richie dressing him, thank fuck. Richie considered going with easy as possible clothes—sweatpants, a shirt, a hoodie—but the goal was to make Eddie pass as a respectable human being, and freeballing in sweatpants and a stained hoodie might not get the job done. So instead Richie picked out an entire office-casual outfit, down to the underwear and shoelaces, from Eddie’s copious sartorial options he’d brought with him to Derry. 

Underwear, socks, charcoal-grey slacks, belt. Eddie just sat on the edge of the bed and let Richie work, eyes staring off at the wall above his head. It was disconcerting, but at least Richie wasn’t having to sit on top of Eddie’s chest while he tried to yank his boxer-briefs over his floppy dick. Button-up shirt, light jacket, shoes. Richie even rubbed some product through Eddie’s hair that he’d found in his toiletry bag and combed it back.

Stepping away, Richie slowly lowered the comb and observed his handiwork. He still needed to slap some sunglasses over those freaky, sickly eyes, but other than that…

Eddie’s chin dropped to his chest. Richie froze. For a long, long moment, nothing happened.

Then Eddie opened his mouth and sucked his shirt into his mouth, gnawing lightly at the buttons.

Richie rubbed his forehead. He’d buy the weirdo a vape or something to gnaw on. They just had to get through eight hours of cross-country travel. It’d be fine.

* * *

His kitchen floor was covered in rows and rows of plates, take out bags, bowls, and tin cans. On one side, Eddie sat against the fridge, gnawing absently at the towel Richie had let him steal from the Derry Inn (an escaped madman had stabbed Eddie in the shower and then fallen through a window in that Inn: the last thing their credit cards had to worry about getting charged was for a single stolen towel). On the other end of the kitchen, Richie sat crouched, indulging his own oral fixation by housing a few large servings of Mickey D’s French fries.

“We gotta find something you can eat, buddy,” Richie told Eddie again, for what felt like the hundredth time.

It’d been a fucking week, by Richie’s count, since Eddie’s last meal (ill-fated soup at the Derry Inn not included). Eddie seemed… fine, which was worrisome in it of itself, but Richie figured whatever magic was keeping Eddie alive would only last so long, especially since It was dead and Derry was long gone behind them. After all, the memory-whammy hadn’t happened, this time around. And it wasn’t just because Richie was with Eddie: Bill and Mike both remembered everybody, and they’d both gone off their own separate ways. Bev and Ben remembered, too, but Richie figured they were less of a good test case since they were sticking together, too.

Of course, for all the other Losers knew, Richie had gone _his_ lonesome, separate way as well.

But that was a problem for another day. Right now, he was focused on figuring what, if anything, he could convince Eddie to eat.

Maybe he’d gone a little overboard. But he couldn’t figure out if he should cater to Eddie’s hypochondria and persnickety food preferences, or if going entirely the other direction was the key to breaking whatever spell he was under. So from the “maybe Eddie wants to go hog wild and eat total garbage” they had Mickey D’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Popeye’s, KFC, and Taco Bell. On the other end of the spectrum, Richie had ordered from every restaurant in the “health foods” and “vegan” categories on GrubHub, which resulted in a row of greeneries the likes of which this kitchen had never seen. Not the eight years Richie had been living here, at least.

Then came the United Colors of Benetton. Italian, Mexican, Indian. Chinese, Japanese, Thai. Turkish, Greek, Polish. Richie even got the halal market to deliver, _and_ the kosher one. He kept those two dishes on opposite ends of their row ( _heh_ ). There were pasta dishes, deli meats, kebabs, steamed veggies, pierogis, and sushi.

Then Richie had ordered delivery from his local grocery store and selected nearly one of everything. He’d probably bought out the fucking bakery: bread, cookies, doughnuts, pastries. He’d gone through and opened a tin can of every imaginable thing: soup, vegetables, tomato sauces, fruits. There was pie filling and black beans. Everything, anything Richie could think of, he’d spread out on the kitchen floor. And then he’d gently guided Eddie in there, and waited.

Eddie sucked on his towel and listed to the side. One hand stroked at Richie’s stainless steel fridge, petting it absently like Eddie as soothing himself with the smooth, cool touch, repeated motion of hand sliding over metal calming whatever was going on in his batshit head.

Richie picked up a doughnut and ate it in two bites, staring at Eddie the whole time.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with this?

After another five minutes Richie sighed and slid down out of his crouch and onto his ass, stretching his legs out carefully between rows of food as he massaged the cramps out of his thighs.

“You stubborn little hamster. If you don’t eat, how’re we supposed to get you back to normal, huh?” Richie sighed.

Eddie sucked on his towel and gave no indication that he’d he heard him.

A sharp _bzzzzzzt_ ripped through the apartment, startling Eddie into yanking open the fridge door that he had been petting. Eddie howled, yanking at the door, sending the fridge teetering worryingly. Richie started to jerk towards him, but then Eddie whirled on him, lips curled back into a snarl. Richie held out his hands, forcing himself to move slow, slow.

“It’s okay, it’s alright, Eds. Hey: just the doorbell. Remember? That’s where all this food keeps coming from?”

Fuck: he wasn’t used to moving _slow_ with Eddie. Their interactions were always lightning-fast, the only person who could match Richie joke for joke, insult for insult, sometimes spewing out two, three rejoinders in the time it took Richie to say one, in the seconds between Richie screwing up his face and trying not to laugh at Eddie’s _first_ cutting response. But now, now: slow. Slow.

Richie uncurled his aching joints from his cold kitchen floor and padded over to the door, palms pointing down to the floor as he smiled placatingly over at Eddie the whole way.

“Food? Remember? Just more food.”

Richie grabbed a handful of cash from the table next to the door and shoved it in the delivery guy’s hands nearly before he even took the food. Once the door was firmly shut, Richie hefted the bag and peered at it, trying to figure out exactly what this was.

Butcher’s paper. Richie frowned as he brought the bag over to the counter and started to unpack it. Ah, shit: uncooked steaks, uncooked pork loin… Well, he supposed it was okay: he needed to restock his freezer anyway, after cooking everything under the sun for Eddie. Sighing to himself, Richie started to unpack the apparently pounds of meat he’d ordered in the last frantic week of trying to find something, _anything_ Eddie would keep down. The butcher paper sweated blood onto his countertop.

A shadow, looming behind his shoulder. Richie forced himself not to freeze, to just keep steadily unpacking the paper-wrapped meat from the bag. His hands shook.

Eddie’s nose pressed into his arm, near his armpit. He dragged his face over Richie’s bicep, curling slowly, slowly around to the countertop. Richie’s eyes darted between Eddie and the butcher’s packages.

His Corinthian marble countertops were wet with uncooked meat juices, red blood beading on top. Eddie leaned forward, shoulders hunched, bending over at the waist as he pressed his face to the counter. His lips slowly curled over the edge, biting at the smooth marble. Like one of those fish that sucked the algae off the sides of fish tanks, Eddie dragged his mouth over the countertop.

An unearthly whine bubbled up from the back of his throat.

Carefully, _slowly_ , so as not to startle, Richie pulled another package out of the bag. Bone-in ribeye. Richie held it up, waving it a little to get Eddie’s attention. When Eddie’s eyes latched onto the ribeye, Richie unwrapped the brown paper from it. Eddie pulled his mouth off the counter with a pop, eyes fixed on the meaty bone.

“You hungry, buddy? You want this?”

Eddie uncurled himself from the counter, straightening up to his full (short) height as his eyes remained fixed on the ribeye. So he _could_ see out of those ghostly white eyes, irises barely visible beneath a film of sickness. He just needed something worthy of his attention, apparently.

Carefully Richie held the dripping ribeye out to Eddie, not interested in playing keep-away when he’d been trying desperately to find _something_ Eddie wanted to eat for the past week.

“I could cook it firs-”

Eddie seized upon the slab of meat and bone, grabbing it with both hands. Richie let him, watching as Eddie stumbled backwards, stepping all over the rows and rows of cooked meals Richie had set out on the kitchen floor. Whatever, the maid was coming tomorrow. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d cleaned up in his bachelor pad.

Still, Richie winced as Eddie sat down smack dab in the middle of fast food aisle, tacos and hamburgers crunching beneath his pants. Eddie would’ve hated that. Eddie _should_ hate that. As Eddie’s teeth ripped into the raw hunk of meat, a shiver went down Richie’s spine.

It was still Eddie. _It was still Eddie_. They just… had a ways to go. To get him back. And look, step one, accomplished: Eddie was eating! Okay, it was raw beef, but that was _something_. Now maybe he’d start building up his strength and some memories would start coming back. Language. All that.

Richie’s phone buzzed on his hip, jerking him out of the nearly hypnotic daze of watching Eddie tear hunks of raw beef with his teeth and down them in long, gulping swallows. 212 number, what was that. New York, maybe?

“Yo, what is it?” Richie answered, keeping his eyes trained on Eddie.

Silence on the other end of the line. Richie tried again.

“Hey. This is Richie. You there?”

Nothing. Richie shrugged and hung up. He had bigger things to worry about than robocalls. Like the fact that Eddie had eaten the ribeye down to the bone and was sucking on it, dull eyes fixed in Richie’s general direction. Hooooo boy.

Richie snatched a raw steak off the counter and squatted in front of Eddie.

“Hey, bud. That hit the spot, huh?”

Eddie was already sniffing at the steak in Richie’s hands. He gave no indication he heard Richie’s words at all, much less understood them. Richie sniffed back the tears that threatened. It was still Eddie. Eddie was still _here_. They just had to get there, together. Baby steps.

“Want seconds? I fucking bet, after not eating for a week. Here you go.”

Eddie grabbed the raw steak gratefully from Richie’s hands and went to town on it. Richie washed his hands as Eddie ate.

“I know intermittent fasting is like, all the rage out in Silicon Valley right now, but you’ve gotta know that shit is like, terrible for you, right? And even if it wasn’t, seven days is a bit more than the recommended length of time you’re supposed to go between meals, I think. Sixteen-eight, isn’t it? Well, you’d know. I bet you fucking _do_ know, it’s locked up there in that Web-MD encyclopedia you keep in your fucking brain, exactly what’s wrong with every fad diet that ever made the news. Unless you’re a keto guy or something—you probably are, aren’t you, you little shit.” Richie turned around just in time to see Eddie finishing off the last of the raw steak.

Richie raised his eyebrows. “Well, if you weren’t before, you sure as hell are now.”

* * *

The next morning Eddie was eager to eat again, once Richie let him out of the guest room. He went straight for the kitchen, a shadow of his old grace and determination present in his movements. Richie followed behind him and let a flicker of hope bloom in his chest. One day into eating and if you squinted and watched Eddie from behind, you could almost think he was himself. Staying with Richie, waiting for his divorce to blow over (yeah right, but this was Richie’s fantasy), charging into the kitchen to make some sort of kale smoothie and try to force Richie to drink it with him.

Except when Eddie made it to the kitchen, he stood in front of the fridge and started pawing at it. When Richie padded quietly onto the tile with him, Eddie turned his milky white eyes on him. Richie forced a smile.

“Ready for breakfast?”

Eddie stared.

“Alright, Edster. Let’s see what you’re craving.”

Richie lifted his hand as he moved past Eddie to the fridge, let it float just around Eddie’s shoulder before pulling back, dropping it. He wasn’t sure how Eddie would respond to being touched, and he didn’t want to undo all the progress they’d made so far.

Richie had left all the raw meat in the fridge, not the freezer, since he figured Eddie in his current state wouldn’t be big on waiting for the meat to defrost. Pulling out a steak, Richie made to bring it to the counter, grab a plate. But Eddie was already there, pawing at Richie’s arms, grabbing for the steak.

“I was going to grab you a plate…” Richie tried to explain, but Eddie yanked the steak out of his hands. Richie sighed. “Maybe cut it into pieces for you. Go really wild and hand you a fork. What do you think?” Eddie swallowed a massive hunk of meat, both hands wrapped around the raw meat, fingers digging in as red juices dripped down the back of his hands. “Next time, I guess. Lunch. We’ll make a whole production out of it. Get the steak onto a _plate_ before you go into it like Orson Welles.”

The steak juices were dripping from Eddie’s hands onto the floor where the leftovers of a hundred different aborted attempts at meals lay scattered and stepped on. Richie sighed and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed as he watched Eddie eat.

“Probably a better celebrity I could put in there. Mama Cass? Feels kind of mean. And low-hanging-fruit: Mike Meyers already did that joke in _Austin Powers_. Kevin James? Fat bitch owes me a grand from that Spader party five years ago.”

Eddie ate steadily, ripping hunks of meat off the steak and horking them down like a feral dog.

“Yeah, yeah: I’m being fatphobic, or whatever. Mama’s boy’s gonna call me out on it. I could go with the steak angle over the binge-eating angle. John Wayne? Randolph Scott? Fuck, could make it a gay joke with a manly cowboy joke, really get a couple levels in there. ‘You’re going to town on that hunk of meat like Randolph Scott between scenes…’ something like that, you think?”

Eddie swallowed the last piece of his steak. He started sucking on his fingertips, licking up and down the backs of his hands and wrists, cleaning up all the stray juices he could find. Richie swallowed.

“Can’t wait for you to be back to normal so you can give me shit about making fat jokes. And gay jokes. You’d probably be pissed off about that too, you fucking Wall Street yuppie. You’ve probably described yourself as ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal,’ haven’t you?”

Richie’s phone rang. He answered it without looking, figuring it was Steve to get on his case again about canceling his tour indefinitely.

“Yo bitch: I told you, I got shit to sort out. _I’ll_ call _you_.”

No answer. Richie frowned and pulled the phone away from his ear so he could check the caller ID. It wasn’t Steve—some number he didn’t recognize.

“Hello? Hey, this is Richie. Anybody there?”

Nothing. Richie hung up and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

“Alright, you ugly motherfucker,” Richie told Eddie. He stared back with red steak juices all around his mouth. “Let’s get you cleaned up and… Man, I don’t know. There’s not exactly a handbook for how to get your friend who just came back from the dead back to their normal, six-hundred-words-per-minute yapping self. Can you say anything? Do you remember words??”

Richie pointed at himself. “Me. Richie.” He poked a finger in Eddie’s chest. “You, Eddie. Ed-die. Spa-ghe-ddie. Ed-ster. The Eds. Ed-ward. Ed. Eddie. You remember that? Can you say Ed-die?”

Eddie stared blankly ahead. After a moment his chin tilted down and he looked at Richie’s finger on his chest.

He opened his mouth and vaguely tried to bite at it. Richie sighed and pulled his hand back.

“Okay. So maybe that’s first steps. Basic English. How the fuck do people learn basic English?”

A klaxon went off inside Richie’s head. His eyes lit up. “Oh. Oh shit. I actually… I know how to do this.”

* * *

_“Five! Five apples! Ah-ha-ha-ha!”_

“You remember numbers, you little number-cruncher?” Richie asked. He was eating a bowl of cereal on the floor with Eddie, because the weirdo couldn’t figure out how to work a couch. Which was kind of fine by Richie: there was something comforting about the familiarity of him and Eddie, sitting on the floor in their PJs watching TV, Richie well on his way to a sugar high. Of course, used to be that Eddie would be on his way right behind Richie to sugar-high mountain, and chattering nonstop because of it. Now Eddie was silent, and his hands and mouth were empty after polishing off his breakfast steaks. Naturally, Richie was trying to fill the silence enough for the both of them.

“See? That’s one, two, three-” Richie pointed at each of the apples with his spoon as he counted, “four, five. You try, Eddie. You remember? One…”

Eddie stared straight ahead. Richie sighed and reached up to comb back his hair again. It kept curling forward onto his face. It was fucking adorable, but Richie felt like it must be bothering him. Or would, if he’d been in his right mind.

_“One. One apple! Ah-ha-ha-ha!”_

“Maybe if we did it with something you actually wanted to eat,” Richie mused. Kind of like training a dog, right?

When he got up to ditch his cereal bowl in the sink, Richie made a detour to the fridge and pulled out another steak. He felt safer feeding Eddie steak than, say, chicken, because Eddie was _insistent_ that the meat not be cooked, and feeding Eddie raw chicken just seemed like it was begging for trouble. At least like, people actually _ate_ raw steak sometimes, right? Tar-tar, that was a thing. Like sushi. So it had to be safe. But raw _chicken_? Eddie would kill him, once he got his mind back.

“Alright, let’s-” Richie turned around and immediately fell backwards against the counter. Eddie was _right there_ , mouth open, eyes locked down to stare at the pieces of raw steak in Richie’s hands.

“-count?” Richie finished, except not really, because he’d forgotten where the hell he’d started. Carefully, carefully, Richie edged sideways along the counter, finally putting enough room between himself and Eddie to squeeze past him. Without being pinned against the wall Richie breathed a little easier. Eddie’s eyes stayed fixed on the bite-sized steak pieces in his hand.

“Here we go,” Richie told himself. He held up a piece of steak. “One. One steak. Can you say _one_?”

Eddie stared at the piece of steak.

“One. _One_ piece of steak.” Richie waited a beat. “Ah-ha-ha-ha,” he trailed off sadly.

Some movement, at that. Eddie’s eyes flickered to his. Then back to the steak. He opened his mouth.

“ _No_.”

Richie gasped. “Eddie?”

“No.”

And with that, Eddie snatched his hand out and stole the steak out of Richie’s fingertips.

“Eddie! You did it!”

Eddie chewed the piece of steak, eyes already focused back down on Richie’s other hand, where a half dozen more bites of steak sat waiting. Fumbling, Richie pinched a piece between his fingers and held it up.

“One. _One_.”

“No.”

Again, Eddie reached forward to snatch the piece of steak out of Richie’s hand. But Richie had expected that this time, and lifted his hand higher, out of Eddie’s reach.

“Ah-ah! You have to say it! Come on, buddy. _One_. One piece of steak!”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed on Richie. They weren’t _normal_ eyes yet. You could make out that they were brown, but the whites were still deeply stained yellow, semi-transparent white film still over the whole thing. It should be terrifying, having _those_ eyes narrowing at you in anger, because you were _withholding_ food from it. But it didn’t terrify Richie. It _thrilled_ him.

 _Eddie_ narrowed his eyes like that. Had been doing it since they were kids. Had done it _exactly_ this way, in _exactly_ this scenario, of Richie playing keep-away with Eddie, using his height to his advantage.

Eddie was still _in_ there. Richie _knew_ it. This was just proof.

“Can you say it with me, Eddie? One? _Wwwwuuunnn_?”

Eddie snarled. His hand shot out— _not_ , to Richie’s surprise, to grab at the piece of steak he was holding aloft in his right hand—to his left hand, where Richie was holding the fistful of steak bits. Richie was so startled by the change in tactic that Eddie managed to snatch away more than half of the steak bits before Richie jerked his hand away.

“Eds!”

Eddie took his time chewing, savoring the mouthful of steak. After he swallowed noisily, Eddie cocked his head at Richie. Then he growled: “No,” and walked away.

Richie’s heart was slamming in his chest. A giggle bubbled out of his throat as he smiled manically. Hey! Progress!

* * *

Richie almost regretted encouraging Eddie to start speaking again.

 _Almost_. He wasn’t a fucking _monster_. Of course he wanted Eddie to heal all up and be back to his normal, bitchy little self (even if it meant Eddie went back to his life, to his wife, left Richie all alone to pick up the pieces of his self with Eddie lost to him again…). But Richie hadn’t considered exactly how much of a _bitch_ Eddie could be: so much of one, apparently, that even with ninety-nine percent of his personality still booting back up, Eddie remembered he was supposed to annoy the every-loving shit out of Richie as much as he could.

“No.”

Richie sighed and clicked over to the next show on his Hulu list. “How about this?”

“No.”

“What about this one?”

“No.”

When they were in the kitchen and Richie was trying to get Eddie to say some more words (since it had worked the first time):

“What do you want to eat?”

“No.”

“Steak?”

“No.”

“Or tuna?”

“No.”

“I’ve got some nice raw salmon.”

“No.”

Richie sighed as he let Eddie yank the raw steak of out his hand and scurry off to do his nasty business in the opposite corner of the kitchen. Hey, at least it was progress, right? Baby steps.

By the end of week one of the great “No” revelation, Richie was picking up spam calls just to have another human to talk to. Richie swore he was forgetting how sentences worked. Was this how single mothers felt? They deserved more money. Any money? Did single mothers get money? Well, Richie was going to start a fund, and give them money, because how any mother raised a toddler to childhood without strangling it to death was a fucking miracle.

“Yello, my name is Richie, please tell me you’re a human and not a robot. I’ll buy your mighty putty insurance or whatever you’re selling, just talk to me in three-syllable words for twenty minutes.”

Nothing from the other end of the line. Richie pulled it back from his ear and glanced down. Call was connected, and still going. He tried again:

“Hello? This is Richie. Anyone there?”

Silence.

Ah, shit. Richie jammed the end call button and turned back to Eddie. Alright. What hadn’t he tried?

Two days later, Richie sat on the floor of his living room with Eddie, Cookie Monster puppet over one hand and waving him in a frantic attempt to get Eddie to focus.

“ _C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me-_ ” Richie sang in his best Cookie Monster voice.

Eddie stared off to the side.

“ _C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me; C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me…”_

Nada. Richie sighed and reached the Cookie Monster puppet behind his back and snatched up a hidden supply of raw salmon with his puppet mouth. When he brought it back around to the front, Eddie’s head snapped around.

“ _S is for salmon, that’s safe for Eds to eat, S is for salmon, that’s safe for Eds to eat,”_ Rich sang, waving the puppet around.

Eddie leaned forward and closed his mouth around Cookie Monster’s head. Richie sighed and let him have the salmon.

“Valiant effort, buddy.” Richie told him.

The next breakthrough came from _nothing_. Richie was just standing in the kitchen, shimmying around as he whipped himself up an egg salad sandwich for lunch (the secret was: you had to go _all in_ on the spicy mustard), and Eddie was contentedly horking down his plate of fancy-ass sushi Richie had prepared for him (AKA, ordered from a sushi joint and then set on a plate, sans rice).

“ _R is for Richie, that’s the sexy guy that’s me; E is for Eddie, who’s hot enough for me; E is for egg salad, which goes in my tum-e…”_ Richie was singing to himself.

“Rrrrr.”

“Yeah yeah, Eddie. Grrrr. You’re a real scary zombie,” Richie said without looking up. “Did you finish your sushi? Hang on, there’s some steak in the freezer we should start thawing for your dinner.”

“Rrrr…”

Richie’s head jerked up. Eddie was looking at him. But not like Richie was the second course to his frankly, incredibly bougie zombie lunch. Like he was…

Like he was _thinking_?? Richie turned to him, egg salad sandwich abandoned.

“Eddie?”

Eddie’s eyebrows were pinched together. Like he was _concentrating_. Richie’s breath caught in his throat.

“Rrr…”

“Richie?” Richie prodded. _Oh, oh fuck. It’s really happening!_ Tears sprang to his eyes. He patted at his own chest. “Richie, I’m Richie. Richie?”

“Rrrr…”

“Yeah, that’s right, Eddie! Richie!”

“Rrrrr… rrrr… wrrrrooong.”

Richie stared at Eddie. For half a second, something like a smile flickered across Eddie’s face. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, but it _had_ been there. Just for a second, but still.

“You fucking dick.”

“Wrong.”

Richie laughed and shoved his hands onto his hips.

“You. Fucking. Asshole.”

“Wrong.”

“You’re learning to speak in order of the words you most use with me, aren’t you? First ‘no,’ now ‘wrong,’ your brain is booting up like a fucking word frequency dictionary for me, isn’t it? Man, _fuck_ you.”

“No.” Eddie tilted his head. “Wrong.”

Tears blurred Richie’s vision. This fucking dick. He was so fucking proud of him. Richie moved forward and wrapped him up into a hug, without thinking about it. Eddie was stiff beneath him, and he certainly didn’t hug _back_ , but at least he didn’t turn and gnaw on Richie’s neck, or something ( _though, under better circumstances, maybe someday_ …).

“We’re getting you back, Eddie,” Richie said into Eddie’s hair. “One annoying fucking syllable at a time.”

“Wrong.”

“Don’t be a fucking dick about this, man.”

* * *

He should have paid more attention to the phone calls. But who the fuck paid attention to spam calls, anyway? And he had plenty else on his fucking mind, thank you.

That didn’t change the fact that he should have paid attention to the phone calls. Should have. But he didn’t.

Which is why he got sucker-punched in his own fucking doorway by a man he’d never seen before, sending him stumbling backwards into his own fucking living room.

“What the fuck!”

“Where is she?”

“Oh you definitely have the wrong house, buddy,” Richie told the guy who was apparently just fucking home invading him, now?! What the shit was this!

“Where is she?” Angry, big, white guy repeated.

“Dude it’s just me and another dude here. And I’m a fucking fag so I’m definitely not hiding your… your girlfriend or whoever the fuck under the mattress.” Richie brought his fingers down from his nose. Fucking bleeding. Incredible. At least his glasses were intact, though they’d fucking bruised all around his fucking eyes.

“You were with her. In Derry. You’re from that piece of shit town with her.”

 _Derry_? Who the fuck-

Oh. Ooooh.

Contrary to popular belief, Richie wasn’t fucking stupid. Ran his mouth too fast, didn’t always stop to think, sure. But he was kind of a genius in school, and he was even more of a genius at _people_. So he figured it out. Even figured out that he should play dumb.

Of course, just because he wasn’t stupid, didn’t mean he wasn’t _fucking stupid_.

Richie laughed and looked Tom up and down. “Well dude, judging by the inseam of those pants I’d say she’s about three inches fuller right now than she ever was married to _you_ -”

Another shot to the nose. This one _did_ break his glasses. Richie fell backwards, over the back of his couch like a fucking pratfall. Somehow he avoided slamming his head into his own coffee table—probably because he and Eddie had shoved it out so they could sit on the floor and watch Sesame Street together while they ate—and he landed hard on the floor between couch and coffee table.

“Whaddya do that for?! _I’m_ not the one giving it to her! Fucking faggot, remember?” Richie pointed out. He ripped off the broken remains of his glasses and tossed them onto the coffee table as he pushed himself up onto hands and knees. “Not to mention I would’ve said five inches, if it was me.”

Tom. Tom Rogan. That was the fucking name Bev had said. Richie remembered it now. Just in time for the guy—Tom Rogan, that had to be him—to roar and launch himself at Richie. Just in time for the guy to turn Richie into a fucking smear in his own apartment.

Richie lay there and braced himself for the blow that didn’t come. There was a scream, and a roar. Richie’s head was a little woozy from the two punches straight to the face. Another scream, and then a crack, and-

It went quiet. Richie, breathing hard, yanked his arms down from over his face, adrenaline spiking. Where-

Richie shoved himself up, scrambling over the couch. There, in the kitchen: Eddie was crouching on top of the man formerly known as Tom Rogan. Tom’s neck was twisted at a terrible angle, eyes open and fixed on Richie.

But more notably, his stomach was ripped open and Eddie was holding his intestines.

“ _Eddie_ -” Richie’s voice cracked. Came out high. Like he couldn’t breathe.

“Eddie-”

To Richie’s shock, Eddie paused. His head lifted, eyes slowly raising until they met Richie’s own. Richie’s breath caught in his throat. His heart felt like it stopped, and then started again with tenfold the force, trying to beat its way right out of his chest. He tried to speak again, tried to form Eddie’s name with lips and tongue, but just when he needed it most his mouth failed him. Figured.

And then Eddie spoke.

“Bad.”

Richie stood there, breathing hard, body shaking. Eddie held his eyes.

“Hurt. You.”

Richie’s legs went out. He collapsed to his knees on the area rug in his living room. Over the threshold, in the kitchen, Eddie watched him. Then he bent his head back down to the corpse of the man formerly known as Tom Rogan, pulled a fresh loop of intestines from his stomach, and started feeding it into his mouth.

Slowly Richie made his way to Eddie, crawling across the floor. Eddie paid him little mind, though he did glance up on occasion. He was more alert than he had been since this whole nightmare began—some flicker of his former intelligence and quickness in the way his eyes flickered up, the movement of his fingers, the studious frown set in his brow. With trembling fingertips, Richie reached out, and brushed Eddie’s hair back from his forehead. Eddie glanced up again, chewing some internal organ of Tom’s. When he swallowed, he said again: “Bad.”

Richie nodded. Right. Tom was bad. Tom had tried to hurt him. _Had_ hurt him. Tom would have hurt him more, wanted to find Bev and Ben and hurt them too. Might have, if Eddie hadn’t been here.

Eddie hadn’t been bad. Eddie hadn’t done the wrong thing. He had just been protecting Richie.

Just like he had back in Its lair.

Falling forward, Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. Buried his face in Eddie’s neck. Eddie stopped moving, hands hovering between them, hovering over Tom’s body. Richie turned his face into Eddie’s neck and _breathed_ , breathed deep. He smelled the same. How the fuck did he still smell the same? How did Richie _know_ how Eddie smelled, when they only spent two days together, barely, before it all went to shit?

“Good job,” Richie whispered. He pulled back. Pressed a kiss to Eddie’s temple as he blinked tears from his eyes. He captured Eddie’s face in his hands and shook it lightly, while Eddie blinked eyes that looked a little less jaundiced, a little less cloudy, at him. “You’re good, Eddie. You saved me. You saved me, again.”

Eddie just stared at him. But it was better than Eddie staring _through_ him, than Eddie’s eyes staring unseeingly in his direction.

It happened so fast that Richie didn’t have time to react. Eddie leaned in, eyes trained on Richie’s lips, and Richie’s brain was a swirl of _no_ and _yes_ and _run_ and _lean in_ and _he’s going to eat me_ and _Eddie, Eddie my love, Eddie-_

And then Eddie’s lips wrapped around the tip of Richie’s nose and sucked.

Richie jerked away in shock. Eddie’s lips were glistening red, tongue darting out to capture the last drops of blood. Richie’s hand shot up to his nose, remembering the two shots Tom had gotten in before… before. Eddie’s eyes were following Richie’s fingers. Staring at his nose. At the blood dripping from it.

If he had to point to it, that would probably be the exact moment his life when completely off the rails.

* * *

He had to clean up his kitchen and figure out what the _fuck_ to do with the dead body in it. Obviously he couldn’t call the cops—even if he could justifiably get away with pleading self-defense, Eddie couldn’t plead to shit right now. Even if his vocabulary was apparently expanding.

( _Why was it expanding now? The trauma? The adrenaline? Surely not because… it couldn’t be because... no…_ )

First thing’s first:

Richie turned around and walked out of the kitchen to his bathroom. He grabbed a spare pair of glasses out of his medicine cabinet and shoved them on his nose ( _ow_ ), then ripped up two handfuls of tissues and shoved them up his nostrils ( _double ow_ ).

Okay. _Now_ Richie turned around and headed back for the kitchen.

Eddie was still on the floor, munching away at Tom’s liver. Or whatever. Richie wasn’t a fucking biologist.

Richie pointed a finger at him.

“Okay. Ground rules. Number one: you can’t eat people. I understand these were exceptional circumstances, and that’s good. You did good, saving my fucking skin. Check plus on that. But: cannibalism, bad. Pretty sure even the Pee-Cee police are going to give me that one. So we gotta just get rid of this mess-”

Richie started forward towards Eddie. He wasn’t even sure what the fuck he was planning on _doing_ —grabbing Tom’s fucking corpse by the arm and dragging him… where? Outside? Hucking him in the dumpster behind his apartment?—but before Richie could do _anything_ , Eddie’s head whipped up, Tom’s guts falling from his open jaws. Eddie snapped at Richie, teeth clacking. A low growl emanated from his throat.

“No,” Eddie snapped.

Richie stepped back and put his hands on his hips.

“Bad. Hurt.”

Richie sighed. “Yeah, bud. Yeah, I know. But now you stopped him, so-”

“Mine. Eat.”

“Okay, so that’s the most words you’ve said in a month,” Richie pointed out. “Which I’m fucking proud of, man, that’s incredible. We’ll throw you a party tomorrow with a steak tar-tar birthday cake, an Eddie’s-Tenth-Word party, but I really need to get rid of the body of the man you murdered in my kitchen-”

“ _No_ ,” Eddie growled again. “Bad man. Mine. Eat. Mine.”

“Okay those are the same words, you’re not impressing me, you one-trick pony-”

“Richie.”

Richie’s knees buckled. He only stayed upright because his kitchen floor was covered in blood. The blood of a man Eddie had just _murdered in his kitchen_. Oh, Richie was _so_ going to jail.

“Okay, that’s-”

“Richie. No.”

 _Just fucking breathe just fucking breathe it’s not like he just declared his love for you and started sucking your dick all he did was say your fucking name which he said_ all the time _and he’s eating a human being!! A human being!! In your kitchen!! You can’t just forget about all that just because he said two syllables that_ happen _to make up your name-_

“Look, Eds, you can’t-”

He wasn’t even giving him the puppy-dog eyes. Couldn’t, in one part because he was face-first horking down fistfuls of man-flesh, and in another part because his eyes were still cloudy-white, brown nearly obscured. But Richie still felt his resolve crumbling because, hey, that’s what happened when the love of your life saved your ass not once but _twice_ in like two months.

_It would be a pretty efficient way of getting rid of a body._

“Okay.”

Richie sighed and squatted down so he could be eye-level with Eddie. The bastard only glanced over at him to shoot him a warning growl before going back to his feast.

“Killing two birds with one stone. Fine. It’ll save me from you eating me out of house and home with your sushi bills, you keto-freak. Not that you could, I’m fucking laded, but. And the dude’s dead, and we’ve got to get rid of the body, so, _fuck it, I guess_ , this as as good as trying to go all _Breaking Bad_ in a bathtub? Which I don’t even fucking have, so, that’s out. Okay, so fine. Fine! He’s yours! Whatever! You win! Happy?”

Eddie actually did glance up at Richie, eyes narrowing. It was almost like they were having a conversation, fucking miracle upon miracles. And then, they kind of _did_ , because Eddie _replied_.

“Good. Mine.”

Richie swallowed audibly. “So I guess we’re going to have to deal with the fact that apparently the fresher the meat you eat the more words you remember and oh okay nope-”

Richie scrambled over to the sink just in time to empty his stomach in it. When he lifted his head to breathe, he realized he’d stepped right through the gruesome remnants of Tom’s corpse, tracking bloody footprints across his kitchen. And there went the _rest_ of his stomach, right into the sink. Another heave, and Richie was just spitting out bile now, there was nothing left in his stomach to gag.

“We’ve got to clean this place up, though,” Richie told him, voice echoing inside the sink where he kept his head lodged, not trusting his stomach yet. “Can’t have Steve walking in here and it looking like the red wedding, you know? And you can’t eat Tom in a day: dude’s going to start to stink, right? And you are _not_ using my fucking freezer for _that_ ; that’s where I draw the line, Eddie, I’m not putting a dude’s head in my fucking freezer with my Costco noodle bowls and Marie Callender pot pies.”

Richie sighed and turned on the faucet, drinking straight from it and then running his head under it. He straightened up with a gasp, combing his wet hair back.

“Okay. Fuck it. I’ve watched enough _Forensic Files_ and _Showtime_. Let’s do this bitch.”

* * *

Richie’s guest bedroom was turning into a late-season episode of _Dexter_. Like when the show got dumb as fuck and Dexter and his sister started fucking even after she found out he was a serial killer? Wait, was there some sort of twist about them being blood-relations too? Maybe not. There could have been. Man that show went downhill hard.

The guest bed, which was Eddie’s bed, now, was basically a nest. The sheets were unmade, spiraled into a circle off-center, where Eddie clearly had been sleeping. The pillows were thrown onto the floor, and on the floor…

Richie had tried. He’d ordered fucking Visqueen off Amazon and crossed his fingers hoping there was a legitimate reason people bought this shit (painting? Should he buy some fucking paint just to give him cover??) otherwise he was on an FBI watch list, now. Then he had rolled up Tom Rogan’s body and dragged it into Eddie’s bedroom. Eddie had even helped with the dragging, once he figured out that Richie wasn’t getting rid of the body but was letting him keep it. For now.

Then Richie had laid out more Visqueen all over the floor of Eddie’s room and dragged in a mini fridge and a wine chiller from his own bedroom and bar, respectively. Because as much as Eddie was going ham on Tom’s corpse, Richie was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to scarf a hundred- and eighty-pound guy down in one day.

( _Ha. Eddie was eating man meat. Haha. Ha_ \- Jesus fuck, Richie’s stomach heaved again.)

When they were done, Eddie contentedly ensconced himself in his room, chowing down on Tom Rogan’s corpse.

But the worst part of it all, even outside the murder ( _self-defense_!) and cannibalism (… _okay, he had nothing_ ), had to be the unavoidable fact:

Eddie was getting _better_.

Every day, every _hour_ , Eddie was saying more words. Even stringing them together in pairs of twos and threes. Richie sat just outside the guest bedroom, Eddie curled up in his nest of blankets on the bed, and _talked with_ Eddie. Not just _at_ , but _with_.

Richie was holding up his iPad now, flipping through photos he’d grabbed off Facebook.

“Do you remember her?”

Eddie stared dully in Richie’s direction, gnawing on what Richie was pretty sure was one of Tom’s toes. Which Richie would be freaking out about, except:

“Bev. Bev…er. ly.”

Tears sprang to Richie’s eyes.

“That’s right, Eds. That’s fucking amazing. Okay, next one. How about this ugly mug?”

Eddie chewed as he thought. “B… Bill.” He glanced up at Richie’s face. “Losers.”

Richie wiped at his cheeks with one shaking hand. “Yeah, buddy. Losers. _Our_ Losers.”

“Mike,” Eddie said, without prompting, Richie hadn’t even flipped to his photo. “Ben. S…” Eddie trailed off. His eyes were focused somewhere over Richie’s head. “Stan.” He looked back down at Richie. “Losers.”

“Losers.”

He was getting _better_.

 _Fuck_.

* * *

Richie stood in Eddie’s doorway, not willing to step foot inside after Hannibal Lectering the room for him.

“So I was thinking we could go on a walk today. Get some fresh air. You could eat some birds or something.”

Eddie was just crawling out of his bed. His hair was sticking all different directions, matted down on one side. Richie’s heart clenched, knowing how much he had wanted to see this sight. Wondering if he ever would, when Eddie was in his right mind. Not even with Eddie in his bed—that was a fantasy too far-fetched to ever entertain. Eddie was straight, Eddie had married a woman (was probably still married, right? No one had declared him dead. There was no body. At worst he was just ‘missing,’ a few weeks out from leaving his wife on a trip to his hometown), Eddie wasn’t interested in Richie that way and never would be, right mind or not. But, maybe: maybe Eddie got his mind back, all the way, and maybe Eddie remembered what it was like to be brave. Maybe Eddie left his wife. Maybe Eddie decided to hang out with Richie, be roommates. Maybe they argued over the morning paper and Eddie bitched at Richie for leaving his dirty socks in all rooms of the apartment, and Richie got to see that bed head for himself, when Eddie was back. When _his_ Eddie was back.

“Because you know, this whole eating humans thing is unsustainable, right? Even more than fossil fuels. Not that many dudes try to murder me. Like, one, two a year, tops.”

Eddie actually spared him a glance as he slid from the bed. Richie perked up and flashed him his winningest smile.

“Eat,” Eddie said.

Well, that was something.

“Birds and shit would work, right? I mean, don’t tell Stan, of course. Let you loose on the park, maybe you catch some squirrels, a stray cat or two. Would that help?”

Eddie moved across the room to his mini fridges. “Need. Eat.”

“Yeah, I know, buddy. But does it have to be _human_? You were doing okay on the steaks and sushi, right?”

“This. Good.”

Eddie was pointing at Tom Rogan’s arm in his minifridge.

Fuck.

“So is this like an _Interview with a Vampire_ situation? Animal meat works okay in a pinch but to see real gains only man-flesh will do?”

Eddie sat down cross-legged on his Visqueen covered floor and started pulling out pieces of the body formerly known as Tom Rogan from his fridge. He didn’t answer. Richie sighed.

“This would be a lot easier if I was a chick, Eds.”

Eddie just looked at him. Richie snorted.

“Because like, periods, you know? You’d get a steady supply of fresh blood every month—and I sure as fuck wouldn’t stop you from getting it _straight from the source_ , if you know what I mean-” Richie waggled his eyebrows up and down. Eddie stared.

“Never mind, ugh, why am I even making period jokes. I’m fucking gay, I don’t even know how periods work.” Richie’s stomach jumped and shuddered. _You can’t just say it-_

But Eddie wasn’t paying attention. In fact, Eddie was busy pulling Tom’s arm out of the fridge. He took a fucking bite out of it. Richie fought down a surge of bile.

“This,” Eddie said around a mouthful of arm. “Good.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Eddie…” Richie muttered. Eddie just bent his head back down to the arm and continued to eat. Richie watched and waited, stomach slowly settling even as the gruesome sight continued to unfold before him. He shifted, scuffing his feet at the edges of the Visqueen tarp in the doorway, the words of his own impromptu confession running over and over again in his brain, burning a path like Eddie pacing his way back and forth across the Derry Inn floors.

His tongue felt like tacky glue as he unstuck it to try and explain himself. “You know, it’s easy to say when I don’t think you’re going to even remember this. Or know what it means. If- _When_ you get to the other side of this, if you remember _this_ part, just do me the common fucking courtesy and don’t mention it, okay? You can tell everybody how I got knocked tits-over-ass like a little bitch by Tom, but let’s just zip our fucking lips about Richie Tozier and his love of man meat that could rival your own. In fact, that’s the deal: I don’t tell anyone how much man meat you horked down to get your brain back, you don’t tell anyone how much I enjoy horking down man-meat recreationally. Deal? Deal. Great. Good. Glad we got that sorted.”

Eddie didn’t reply. Secret safe with him? Richie could only hope so. After all, he was going to do Eddie the courtesy of not mentioning how he got his brain back. One corpse at a time. Least Eddie could do was return the favor of silence.

Eddie bit down on the meat of Tom’s palm. Richie giggled a little hysterically to himself.

“But hey, maybe you’re okay with it: you sure seem like you know your way around a man’s fist.”

Eddie didn’t say anything. Richie huffed, gave himself a point for the chucks he surely would have wrung out of Eddie had he been in his right mind, and pushed off from the door frame to leave Eddie to it.

* * *

His door burst open on a Sunday morning.

The only reason Richie knew it was a Sunday was because he was trying to teach Eddie the days of the week via Sesame Street, and he had pulled up the calendar on his iPhone to try and give Eddie a practical demonstration.

“So today is Sunday. Can you say that? Sunday?”

Eddie looked at him for a long moment. Then, like a miracle, he said: “Sunday.”

Richie could cry. Instead he grinned and pointed at the next date on the calendar. “And what’s that make tomorrow, Eds? After Sunday comes…”

Eddie stared at him. “Hungry.”

Yeah. It’d been a week since Tom had run out, and Richie had to switch Eddie back to sushi and steak tartar. He had been trying not to think about what his next steps were. Eddie had been doing good, but they’d seemed to hit a plateau since the human meat ran out. Which meant Richie had been wandering down to pet stores and stared at mice, guinea pigs, and trying not to cry. Had considered bleeding himself, just a little, and seeing if that helped jumpstart Eddie’s reeducation.

And then Richie’s door burst open.

“Richie! I know you’re in here, I tracked your phone!”

Richie jumped up. Shit, _shit_. _Steve_.

“You can’t avoid me when I have the keys to your apartment, you know.”

Steven, in all his five-foot-eight glory, skidded to a stop in Richie’s living room. Richie was half-upright, pushing himself up from where he and Eddie had settled on the floor in front of the TV, flashcards and blocks scattered around them.

“What the fuck, Rich?”

Richie held up a placating hand.

“Hey. Steve. Look, this isn’t a good time-”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Family emergency,” Richie explained, because that had been the line he’d been feeding Steve until he just stopped replying to his increasingly unhinged texts.

Steve was storming over to them, staring daggers at Eddie at he made his way around the couch as fast as his little legs could carry him. When he pulled up to a stop, it was inches away from Eddie, looking him up and down dramatically. To Richie’s surprise, Eddie was actually paying attention to this. Richie’s eyes darted nervously between Eddie and Steve. Eddie… _never_ paid attention. Not without relentless cajoling on Richie’s part.

Well, not except to exactly one thing. The thing that Eddie was now out of, mini-fridges in his bedroom sitting empty.

Steve gestured at Eddie with his left hand, his right wrapped securely around his latest-model iPhone. “This what we’re calling ‘family’ now? Some twink you picked up downtown?” Steve snapped his fingers at Eddie. “Okay, yes, thank you for your service, up and at’em, I’m going to need you to kindly get the fuck out, because my _client_ has _work_ to do.”

Richie tried to put himself between Steve and Eddie, stumbling around the coffee table and couch and loveseat, limbs and body suddenly feeling too big for his own apartment. It was because now his apartment felt too _small_ , of course: because Steve and Eddie were in at once, and one thousand square feet wasn’t big enough for the two of them.

But Steve was moving fast, trying to get a look at Eddie, trying to get close to him. The blood rushed in Richie’s ears as he started to panic.

“Yo! Tweaker! Come on, play time’s over. Grown-ups gotta work now.”

“He’s the same age as me,” Richie said dumbly, like _that_ was the salient point right now. Steve shot him a look that he rightfully deserved for such an inane comment. Then he turned back to Eddie and snapped his fingers again.

“What are you, are you fucking high? What are you on, come on, kid, get up-” Steve was leaning down to yank Eddie to his feet, getting a look at his eyes. Whatever he saw there made him jerk back, spine straightening like one of those toy drinky birds.

“What the fuck is wrong with him? He got fucking jaundice? He looks like a fucking zombie, Richie.”

Before Richie could even fire off a gay joke about man-eating, Eddie lifted his head to stare up at Steve.

“ _Brains_ ,” Eddie growled. Richie jumped backwards in shock, eyes popping out behind his glasses.

But then Eddie’s eyes turned slow on him, and his lips curled up. Into a _smile_. Eddie was making a _joke_.

Richie’s eyes burned. _Eddie_ , he sobbed in the silence of his mind. But he had to deal with Steve first.

“Oh ha-ha, fuck you very kindly,” Steve snapped. He had his phone in hand, tapping at away it without looking up.

“Look, Steve, Eddie is an old family friend, he’s got…” Richie glanced at Eddie: yellow-eyed, grey skin, circles under his eyes like bruises. “Medical emergency. I told you-”

“Yeah? That why you pack up and leave a fucking tour in the middle of it? Because some close personal family friend you haven’t mentioned in a _decade_ of working together suddenly needed your help getting him through the shakes? For fuck’s sake, Richie, just pay for the rehab if you want to help. Not like you’re exactly a sober living sponsor…”

“Stop it.”

That had been Eddie. Richie tried to smooth his features into expressionlessness, but he was a fucking open book and Steve knew it. Luckily Steve had been looking down at his phone and not at Richie, so he didn’t catch the naked surprise that painted itself all over Richie’s face. Unluckily, because he missed Richie’s naked surprise, he also missed that there was anything to be surprised about. Which was probably why he reached down and yanked at Eddie’s arm without any warning.

“Let’s go, buddy. Come on; I’ll pay for your Uber. Hell: I’ll pay for your _hotel_. We just need to get you out of this apartment so Richie can get back to work.”

Richie darted forward to throw himself between the two men. But Eddie was faster, yanking his arm back from Steve. He rocked a little from his seat on the floor, but otherwise was unmoved. It was enough, though, that it caused Steve to look up from his phone at last.

“Hello? Did this medical emergency affect your hearing?”

It happened so fast. That’s what Richie would say afterwards: it happened so fast. One second Steve was yanking on Eddie’s arm, the two men scuffling lightly in Richie’s living room. The next, Steve’s eyes were going wide, his arms pinwheeling. Their eyes locked, before Richie even realized Steve was falling, Steve’s expression telling him what was happening a second too late. As Steve overbalanced and tilted forward, Richie started to take a step towards him, one hand coming up. But before his foot even landed, before his arm was even fully raised, a sickening _crack_ filled the air of the apartment. Steve was on the ground between one blink and then next.

Blood spread across Richie’s hardwood floors in a red tide.

There was a terrible, interminable, roaring second of _silence_ that filled the apartment. A second later, three seconds later, Richie remembered to suck in a breath, not realizing he’d been holding it as his ears strained for the sound of Steve similarly breathing on the floor of Richie’s living room. From that puddle of his own blood that kept growing bigger.

“Steve?”

Richie dropped down to his knees, scrambling for Steve’s throat. Pulse, pulse-

“Come on, buddy: you just bumped your head, right? You’re fine, this is fine, every kid I knew cracked his head open a little bit at some point-”

He couldn’t feel a pulse in Steve’s neck. _Is this the right side? Where is your pulse?! How the fuck am I supposed to know this I’m a fucking comedian!_ He switched to his wrists—wrists, right? You just, you just jammed your fingers… Fuck!

“Steve! Wake the fuck up!” Richie slapped him across the face. Not his best idea, but he was fresh out of good ones. Probably had been ever since he decided to bring a fucking _zombie home with him from Derry oh fucking fuck_ what did he do?!

Air, right? Breathing. That was the word. Breathing! Check Steve for breathing! Richie shoved his ear against Steve’s nose. Nothing. Oh, heartbeat! He could listen for one! He slammed his ear against Steve’s chest. Heartbeat? Heartbeat? _Come on Steve give me a fucking heartbeat!_

“Richie.”

Richie jumped a foot. Eddie. Eddie was there, standing over him. Richie jumped up and ran for his phone. “ _Stay_!” Richie yelled at Eddie. “Don’t- Don’t fucking-!” 9-1-1. He just had to call 9-1-1. They’d patch him up, they’d get him breathing and everything again, no problem. Docs worked wonders these days, right?

Except. _There’s a man’s skeleton’s in Eddie’s bedroom_. Along with some hair, and teeth (were those part of a skeleton or separate? _Focus, Richie!!_ ). Eddie’s bedroom was covered with Visqueen. Richie lowered his phone. Oh. Oh fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_!!!

“What the fuck!” Richie screamed. Next to him, Eddie was slowly tilted his head to the side, eyes fixed on the curious sight of Steve’s blood spreading across Richie floors. Fuck, he was bleeding all over the area rug, _fuck_!

“What the fuck!” Richie screamed again. “Steve! You fucking idiot!”

Eddie was inching forward. Richie noticed it almost after it was over—like Steve, like he had moved too slow for Steve, Steve! _Oh, Steve, I’m so sorry, Steve._ _You were an asshole but you were my asshole and I fucking loved you for it_. “Eddie!”

Eddie froze, one arms-length away from Steve’s still-warm body. He glanced over at Richie like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Except this time, the cookie jar was a corpse’s guts.

Richie ran out of the room to puke.

* * *

Richie couldn’t face cutting up Steve like he had Tom. So he threw the hacksaw down on the Visqueen-covered floor of his guest bedroom, where Eddie sat, chewing steadily on Steve’s arm. Richie kept his eyes on the ceiling, tears dripping down behind his glasses.

“You know what you have to do,” he said. “Get him into the fridges before he starts to smell.” Then he shut the door behind him and went to medicate himself with a handful of Eddie’s Xanax and a fistful of bourbon.

He woke up the next morning on the bathroom floor, puddle of his own vomit crusting over the side of his mouth and on the tile. Richie grimaced and pushed himself upright just enough to stick his head under the faucet and gulp down some lukewarm tap water. He left the vomit on the bathroom floor. That was a problem for later. For future-Richie: which was easy enough to do, when Richie could barely think ahead to the next ten minutes, much less hours or days into the future. Future-Richie might as well not even exist, while present-Richie was stuck in this purgatory with Eddie.

Richie stopped short just inside the living room entranceway. Eddie was sitting on the couch, watching TV.

Eddie was _sitting_ on the _couch_. Eddie had _turned on_ the _TV_.

“Eddie?”

Slowly Eddie’s head turned to Richie—just slowly enough that Richie’s heart sank, instantly recognizing the movement as just a little unnatural, just slightly too jerky. But Eddie’s eyes still managed to meet his, for the most part, and his skin looked the rosiest it had looked ever since he crawled through Richie’s hotel window back in Derry, guts hanging out of his chest.

“Richie.” He paused, frowning deeply. Then: “Morning.”

A sob tore its way from Richie’s throat and before he could even form a thought he was at Eddie’s feet, pressing his face into Eddie’s knees, clutching at his hands.

“Eddie?”

He still felt cold to the touch, but not much colder than Richie’s feet on a January morning. His hands moved jerkily beneath Richie’s, one finally coming free and lifting… before settling in Richie’s hair. It moved back, then lifted up, resettled. Smoothed back, lifted up. Resettled.

Eddie was stroking his hair.

Richie cried into Eddie’s knees.

“Morning. Richie,” Eddie stuttered out again, but smoother than the first time. Richie lifted his face, trying unsuccessfully to blink the tears from his eyes. Eddie’s own eyes blinked back, slightly uncoordinated. But then his mouth stretched into something that reminded Richie of a smile.

“Richie. I… I…” Eddie smiled, and it was almost natural, this time. “Richie. I… feel. Good.”

A shudder went through Richie, turning his intestines to ice. Eddie was getting better. _So_ much better.

But how much more would it take?

* * *

The next morning Eddie dressed himself, from his own luggage that Richie had brought back with them from Derry. He was in jeans and a black t-shirt with a hoodie pulled on top of it. Richie stood in the entrance to the living room and stared at him in his boxers and bare feet, blinking stupidly behind glasses that he’d most definitely shoved on crooked when he rolled out of bed.

Eddie’s feet were in socks. He’d put on socks.

Before Richie could find his voice, Eddie turned and looked at him. He smiled… He _smiled_. Entranced, Richie stumbled over to him, unable to look away.

“Eddie,” he finally croaked.

“Morning, Richie.”

“You look… good.”

Eddie was still smiling. Richie couldn’t tear his eyes away. He kneeled before Eddie, staring up at him, fumbling out to touch his knees, grab his hands.

“I feel… good. Richie.” Eddie smiled. “Richie.”

“ _Eddie_.” Richie’s voice broke.

Smile never leaving his face, Eddie tilted his head to the side. Slowly he smacked his lips together, staring off into the middle distance like he was thinking.

“Thirsty,” Eddie mused.

“Oh, hey, yeah, bud. What can I get you? We got OJ, La Croix, pop-”

Eddie looked back at Richie, that little puzzled line appearing between his eyebrows. But he was still smiling.

Had Eddie ever smiled this much? Richie couldn’t remember Eddie ever smiling this much. Even when he got him to laugh, it wasn’t this much. And Eddie wasn’t laughing. He was just _smiling_.

“Richie. _Thirsty_.”

It didn’t sink in, for a minute. Not until Eddie patted Richie’s hand and stood from the couch, and made his way not towards the kitchen, but back into his bedroom. Richie watched through the bedroom door as he saw Eddie kneel in front of his mini-fridge.

Oh. Oh.

Richie jumped up and ran into the kitchen, where he couldn’t see into Eddie’s bedroom. “Thirsty.” Right. _Right_.

* * *

The next morning, Eddie had brushed his hair.

Richie was on the couch next to him and they were watching Netflix—what, specifically, Richie couldn’t say. Because he was spending the morning staring at Eddie’s neatly combed, slicked-back hair.

Eventually, Richie’s stomach got the better of him and he had to jump up to get some snacks or risk wasting away to nothing, entranced by Eddie’s hair like Narcissus in the lake. Absently he shouted over his shoulder:

“He Eds, you want anything?”

Eddie didn’t answer for a minute, which didn’t ping Richie’s anxiety because he was too distracted by deciding between onion cream cheese or honey cream cheese for his everything bagel. He was so distracted he didn’t hear Eddie’s footfalls out of the living room and then back. It was only when he turned around, holding up the two tubs of cream cheese, that he saw Eddie had left to retrieve something.

“What do you think, honey nut or- Oh hey, you got something?”

Slowly Eddie lifted his hands, showing Richie what he had folded into his palm.

It was four fingers. Steve’s fingers.

“Got my own snack.”

Richie dropped both tubs of cream cheese and walked straight out of the kitchen and into his own bedroom, slamming the door.

Okay. Okay. This was. This was fucking insane. He’d definitely- _You’ve gone off the fucking deep-end, Rich. You’ve got a fucking zombie living in your guest room and you’re in love with him. This is like some bad teenage girl coming of age comedy except you’re a forty year old man in the_ real fucking world _, buddy, and you’re in_ Chicago _, you ain’t in Derry anymore, Dorothy. You gotta get it the_ fuck _together and figure out what the_ fuck _you’re going to do with our undead childhood crush because this is fucking unsustainable, man!!_

And instead of actually doing anything, like a fucking adult, Richie decided to behave exactly like he always behaved, which was like a self-destructive frat boy. Which meant pulling out his emergency bourbon and locking himself in his room for the rest of the day. _Better men than him_ had become apartment recluses, after all! Maybe he just… Howard Hughes’s it! For the rest of his life! _Eat my ass, Orson Welles_. Wasn’t like he was nearly famous enough for anyone to give two shits if he disappeared for a few years. He had _plenty_ of time to figure this shit out. Yeah.

* * *

Eddie was in his bed.

Richie rolled over, wrapping an arm around Eddie and pulling him close. Pressing a nose into his shoulder, his neck. Breathing deep. Eddie moved against him, calf sliding over Richie’s calf, knobby knees and ankles knocking into each other. Richie moaned, pressing his hips forward.

 _No_. He startled back. Eddie was in his bed.

Richie scrambled against the sheets, laughing awkwardly as he put some distance between them and tried frantically to calm his erection, which was _way_ more than his standard morning wood. No thanks to the… the… _Eddie_ , lying all sexy in his bed. What the hell was he doing there?!

“What the hell are you doing here, Eds?” Richie ruffled up his hair and tried for a casual chuckle. “Get cold in your room? Need me to teach you how to use the thermostat?”

“I’m always cold,” Eddie commented. He reached out, and before Richie could react Eddie was pressing his hand to Richie’s bare chest. “See?” Eddie’s dull eyes bore into Richie’s. “Still cold.”

His hand _was_ ice cold. Richie tried to focus on _that_ as he swallowed, on Eddie’s corpse-cold hand: not on the fact that Eddie was in a t-shirt in his bed, pressing his hand to Richie’s heart.

“You sound good,” Richie said, instead of a million other things he could have said.

“Feel good,” Eddie confirmed. His hand was still on Richie’s chest. Richie licked his lips, not sure where he should be looking. Unable to look away from Eddie’s grey eyes.

“Do… Do you think… You think you’re just about all better, buddy?” _No more eating the corpses of men who have conveniently died in my apartment?_

Eddie’s eyes slid downwards, from Richie’s eyes to his nose to his mouth and beyond. The settled on his own hand, pressed against Richie’s chest.

“Not fixed yet.”

Slowly, Eddie lifted his hand, just to pick up Richie’s own. Richie watched, transfixed, as Eddie brought Richie’s hand to his own chest and pressed it there. Richie let his fingers spread out, breath locked in his throat, blood thrumming in his veins.

“See?” Eddie asked, and Richie couldn’t see, couldn’t think. But Eddie continued: “No heart. Not fixed yet.”

“You’ve… You’ve still got some more. Snacks? Uh?” _Don’t think about Steve’s fingers, don’t think about Steve’s fingers—CHICKEN FINGERS—don’t think-_

“Not enough.”

Eddie fixed his gaze on Richie’s.

“Need more.”

Eddie slid forward, drawing himself in with Richie’s own arm trapped against his chest. Richie leaned back, mostly on instinct to protect his own propriety, to hide the effect Eddie’s closeness was having on his body. Eddie licked his lips.

“Thirsty.”

 _WHUMP!_ Richie landed with a _thud_ on the floor next to the bed. Eddie slowly made his way to the side, going to peer over it, but Richie was already up, grabbing at his own sheets, yanking them from over Eddie to wrap them around himself.

“Hey, Eds, I gotta… shower, I got a… meeting, today…”

Eddie’s dull eyes tracked over Richie’s face, his chin, his neck, drifting down, down. Richie stumbled over his own feet, one arm reaching behind him for his own doorframe. Eddie licked his lips.

Richie tripped over his own feet.

“Richie-”

“Okay yup gotta go Eds you uh, keep gnoshing on good old Steve, uh, okay!”

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!_

* * *

It was a week later when there was a knock on his door. Eddie had run out of pieces of Steve to suck on and had refused to go back to raw, non-human meat. Instead he had just grown increasingly sulky, if not downright… _seductive_? No, that had to be Richie’s fucked-up brain, mixing up his teenaged crush with too much _Twilight_ and mistaking the pale, terse, brooding creature inhabiting the body of his long-lost love for something with _sex appeal_. So they were sitting on the couch, Richie on one side, Eddie reluctantly relegated to the other, in spite of his best attempts to slink closer. _He’s just after your fucking blood, man. And organs! Of course, there were organs to spare. He didn’t need his appendix, and only needed one of his kidneys. Maybe if he just snipped off a pink toe or something…_

The knock. Richie launched himself off the couch, head snapping between the door and the couch. Eddie had perked up, eyes fixed on the door. Ho, boy. No no no nope no way Richie was _not_ letting another unwitting dupe fall victim to a “tragic accident” in Richie’s apartment. Even if it got Eddie another step closer to normalcy. Even if it got Eddie _back_ , all the way. _Right_?

“You.” Richie jabbed a finger at Eddie, who only very slowly tore his gaze away from the apartment door. Richie threw his finger in the direction of Eddie’s bedroom. “Go to your room.”

Slowly Eddie uncurled himself from the couch, watching Richie the whole time. Beneath the back of whatever stupid shirt Richie had thrown on today, sweat started to trickle down his spine. For a long, desperate moment, Richie wasn’t sure which way things would go. Eddie was looking at him with a curious, almost wholly _life_ like gleam in his eye. But then Eddie turned away, shoulders slumped, and shambled off to his bedroom. Richie waited until he heard his door shut before he lowered his finger, shaking badly.

Another knock at the door. Richie puffed out his cheeks and breathed hard, running a hand through his hair. Okay, okay. This was fine! This was great! Everything was great and normal and it was probably just a pair of Mormon kids or something and he could send them off on their merry way with a hearty handshake and a suggestion to maybe check out some gay porn and reevaluate their lives.

“Ben?”

Large as life, fucking _Ben Hanscom_ was standing on Richie’s doorstep, smiling sheepishly just like he had at the Jade of the Orient… what was it, three months ago? Fuck. Ben was wearing a light leather jacket, clean shaven face and artfully messy hair making Richie abruptly aware of just how much of a disaster he must look like. _You could’ve fucking shaved this week_ , the thought ran unbidden through Richie’s head. He smiled awkwardly and rubbed at his jaw. Youch, yeah, that was stubble verging on a beard.

“Benny boy!” Richie said out loud. Ben held his arms open and Richie awkwardly went in to hug him, realizing only afterwards that he had to work to remember the last time he showered. Three days ago, probably? Great, really holding it together there, Tozier.

“Hey, Richie. How you doing?”

Richie bobbed his head, looking around a little wild-eyed. What was Ben doing here? Was Bev with him? When was the last time he replied to a text from Ben?

“Doing good, doing good. You know.”

Ben’s eyes were soft, and the big guy actually reached a hand out to place it on Richie’s shoulder. He squeezed, and Richie went still, like a deer in deadlights. What?

“How you really doing, Richie? After…”

Richie panicked. Did he know? How’d he know?! No one had seen Eddie, right, back in Derry? He’d gotten him across the country, did, maybe the wife was looking for him and realized he used his ID to board a plane to Chicago? Had she hired a private eye? Had she hired _Ben_?! No, wait, that was ridiculous-

“…with Eddie. I feel like we haven’t been there enough for you.”

Oh. Oh, right! Eddie was _dead_! Because Eddie was _dead_! Richie had to fight back a relieved giggle, realizing it would sound _insane_ , to start laughing over Eddie’s “death.” He schooled his face into something suitably dour. Okay, uh, how would he handle this? Deflect with a joke, right? Good old defense mechanism!

“You kidding me? You guys blowing up my phone every day; I went from having zero friends and a ficus I couldn’t keep alive to having four friends who won’t stop fucking hassling me. So, uh, is this a social visit, or…?”

Ben apparently took that as an invitation to let himself in, which Richie did _not_ mean it as. But then Ben was in his foyer and there wasn’t much left for it besides closing the door and shooting completely subtle and not-obvious-at-all glances towards Eddie’s closed bedroom door. _Stay. Stay. Stay. Good Eddie. I’ll get you a treat if you just stay put. Open up a fucking vein, cut a hunk of meat off my ass. Just_ stay _!_

“Actually, I wanted to warn you. Bev’s ex, Tom Rogan? He’s been trying to hunt her down on social media, and contacted Bill when he figured out they were from the same town she went back to. We think maybe he called Bill because he was famous and he could get his contact information, which means you could be next on his list.”

“Tom Rogan? Never heard of him!” Richie shouted in his worst Groucho Marx.

“He’s Bev’s ex-husband. Well…” Ben rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Soon-to-be ex.”

“Oh Bennie boy, are you committing _adultery_? And in front of my _salad_?”

Ben stared at Richie, smile half-cocked but mostly looking confused. Richie huffed and tried to change tacks. He clapped his hands together too loudly and glanced around.

“Well, no Tom Rogan here. You can check under the cushions but I’m pretty sure I’d remember sitting on that, hey-ho, okay, so?”

“You feeling okay, Richie? You look a little sweaty.”

Richie smiled so big his cheeks hurt. “Okay? I’m doing great! But actually I’ve got a deadline, so uh, I’ll catch you later-”

“You haven’t been replying to our texts,” Ben continued, crowding in a little closer. Stepping a little further into Richie’s apartment. _Damn it, Ben, get out! Get the fuck out! Before you slice your hand open on your own rock-hard abs and the monster I’ve got in the closet comes out to make dinner out of your desserts!_

“Oh, you know, just busy. Throwing myself into my work. Hey, speaking of, I’m sure you’ve got to get going, catch your… plane?” Richie abruptly realized he had no idea why Ben was in Chicago. Didn’t he live in New York? Upstate? Why the fuck was he in Chicago? Wait, he hadn’t tracked Rogan _here_ , had he? Did he know? _Had he figured it out?!_

But Ben was still looking at him with gentle concern. “Did you remember I was going to be in Chicago this week?”

“Oh, uh, must have slipped my mind-” _Did I fucking know that? Must’ve been a text_ \- “I’ve got this deadline, work’s been crazy-”

“Richie…” Ben took another step closer. Too close. Richie jumped backwards into an end table. It teetered for a second, and then-

“Fuck!”

_CRASH!_

Richie froze. Ben was already moving forward to help.

The door at the end of the hall opened.

“ _No!_ ” Richie jumped between Ben and the rest of his apartment, hands held out. “Eddie, heel, boy! It’s fine! Back the _fuck_ up!”

“Richie, what-”

“ _You’re not going to fucking eat him, too!_ ”

Eddie was there, in the hallway. But he had stopped at the opposite side of the living room, not moving closer as Richie screamed at him (maybe a little over-dramatically). He cocked his head slowly, eyes staring at Richie, and then slowly, slowly, sliding over to Ben.

“Uh. Richie?”

“Stay back, Ben!”

But Eddie didn’t move. If anything he rocked backwards a little bit on his heels, waiting in the hallway.

“Richie? Is that? Is that Eddie?”

“Listen, I can explain, but right now I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t fucking eat you, okay? Stay away from sharp objects and watch your fucking step, okay?”

“What?!”

“Eddie? Hey, Eddie? Look at me,” Richie whistled. Eddie’s eyes darted back to his. “There you go. Okay, come on. Go back to you room, would you?”

“Ben.”

Richie swallowed audibly, tears jumping to his eyes. Eddie looked away from him again and his gaze was fixed on Ben. _He remembered. He knew who Ben was. He knew who they all were_. Richie had been showing him pictures, trying to- And he _remembered_.

“Eddie?” Ben squeaked.

“Ben.”

“Richie?!” Ben ducked behind Richie, peering out from behind his shoulder. “Richie! It’s- It’s It, is it- Is it It?! What is it?!”

“It’s not It, it’s Eddie!” Richie snapped. He kept one hand out at Eddie even as he turned half his attention to Ben. “It’s him, okay, just- Just calm down, he-”

“Ben.” Eddie said again. He took a step forward. Richie turned his full attention back to him, swinging both hands out.

“Don’t! Don’t you fucking dare, Eddie! He’s _fine_ , he’s your friend, he’s _Ben_. Do you remember Ben?”

“Ben,” Eddie repeated. Then, something that might have been a smile pulled at his lips. “Ben. You’re my friend.” He took another step forward.

“Richie, Richie. Is this a fucking trick?” Ben hissed.

“It’s not a fucking trick, okay? It’s Eddie,” Richie told him, even as his eyes stayed fixed on Eddie, making his way one deliberate step at a time across the living room. “He crawled into my fucking window in the Inn, guts hanging out of his chest. I cleaned him off, wrapped him up-”

“-took him to a hospital?!”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need a hospital. Ben. I feel… good.” His eyes slid to Richie’s. “Almost all better.”

Richie groaned through gritted teeth as he jabbed a finger at Eddie. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare, Eddie.”

“What’s wrong with him, Richie?”

“Almost nothing,” Eddie said. He was halfway across the room.

“Richie, I don’t know what’s been going on in here, but that’s _not_ Eddie.”

Eddie snarled, steps suddenly picking up. Richie took a step forward.

“Fucking _stop_ or I _will_ bash your brains in with a fucking daytime Emmy, you know I will.”

Eddie hissed lowly but came to a stop. He was maybe three big strides away from Richie, now.

“Richie. Richie, we can call the guys. Get help. Mike… Mike would know. We could-”

“No! It’s Eddie,” Richie told him. “It’s just… leftover magic, you know? And he just… he just needs to get better, and then he’ll be back. He’s better, Ben. He’s _talking._ Look at his hair! His clothes! A month ago he could barely say his ABCs!”

“Richie…” Ben’s eyes were fixed on Eddie’s. “How’d he get better?”

Richie giggled. Eddie was watching him, eyes dark. Darker than Richie had ever seen them. Darker even than the Eddie in Neibolt that had vomited black bile.

“Richie. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Richie whispered. “He didn’t do anything. He… He didn’t _hurt_ anyone.”

“Richie…” Eddie growled.

“Richie,” Ben prodded.

“It was self-defense.” Richie’s voice cracked. “Tom came. Attacked me. Eddie saved me.”

“It was self-defense,” Eddie echoed, black eyes fixed on Richie’s.

“Did you call the cops?”

Richie laughed.

“Richie: what happened to Tom?”

“It helped Eddie,” Richie explained, pleaded. “He got better. And it was self-defense. And Steve…”

“Steve?”

“Steve fell,” Eddie said.

“It was an accident…” Richie whimpered.

“Richie.” Ben’s hand fell heavy on Richie’s shoulder. “Richie, get back. It’s… We need to get you help. Get Eddie help. Come on. We’ll call Mike, we’ll-”

Richie took a step back.

Eddie hunched over, features contorting.

“It was an _accident_ ,” Eddie hissed.

“It was an accident,” Richie agreed with him. “I know, I know Eddie, I know it was.”

“I’m almost better…”

“Eddie,” Richie whimpered. He blinked tears from his eyes. “Eddie, I can’t- What- What do you want me to do?”

Eddie’s eyes flickered to Ben.

And that’s when Richie knew what he had to do.

He stepped away from Ben, hand sliding off his shoulder. Slowly, carefully telegraphing his every move, Richie headed towards the kitchen. He kept his eyes locked with Eddie’s.

“You’re almost better?” he asked.

Eddie licked his lips. “Almost.”

“Just a little bit more, right?”

“Richie?” Ben shouted, frozen where he was in the foyer.

Richie reached his kitchen counter, Eddie mirroring his every step. Slowly Richie reached out to his knife block and wrapped his hand around his largest cooking knife. Eddie’s eyes gleamed.

“And then you’ll be better?”

“I’m almost better,” Eddie repeated.

Richie pulled the knife from the block. He stared into Eddie’s eyes. They were black.

“Eddie,” he whimpered. “I love you.”

And then he plunged the knife into Eddie’s head.

Eddie howled as he went down, but Richie threw all his weight on top of him, pinning him to the kitchen floor. He stabbed Eddie again and again until he fell still. Distantly he heard Ben screaming. And crying? No, wait: he was crying. And screaming. But Ben was screaming, too.

Richie collapsed forward, wrapping his arms around Eddie and sobbing. Again, _again,_ he had to experience Eddie dying in his arms _twice_ in one lifetime, what kind of cosmic karma was this, how could one man’s heart bear it?

Ben’s hands were around him, dragging him off Eddie’s body, dragging him into his chest. Richie sobbed and sobbed, broken and bleeding and unable to imagine a way forward. He thought he had him back. He thought, if he could just do everything right… and now he was gone. Again.

Ben was muttering soothing nonsense against his hair. Richie couldn’t hear him over the sound of his own sobs, through the heavy wool blanket of grief that had muffled all his senses.

“Richie, Richie, shh…” Ben murmured. And then, at a piercing pitch: “ _Richie_! _What the fuck, Richie_!” 

Richie jumped back as Ben screamed and pointed. On the floor, Eddie was…

Eddie jumped up, _screaming his fucking head off_ , as he pulled the knife out of his head.

“Eddie?!”

Eddie screamed as he dropped the knife on the floor.

“ _Eddie_?!”

“You fucking dick!” Eddie screamed. “That fucking hurt!”

“Oh fuck me you _are_ It aren’t yo- wait!” Richie blinked. “Eddie?!”

Eddie was rubbing his forehead, blood wiping away in streaks to reveal the undamaged skin beneath. “Yeah, _what_ , dickwad?”

“Eddie! It’s you!”

Suddenly Eddie stopped and patted himself down. “Holy shit! Richie! It’s me! I’m back to normal!”

“I can’t believe that fucking worked!” Richie rushed forward, heart hammering in his chest. _Jesus Fuck_ , he was going to have a _fucking heart attack_.

“Don’t fucking try it again!” Eddie warned him, hands coming up. But Richie scooped him up anyways into a big bear hug, swinging him around off the ground while Eddie squawked and beat at his shoulders.

“I can’t believe it. You’re back! How do you feel? What was it like?”

Richie had to let Eddie down to speak, probably, so he did, beaming as Eddie dusted himself off. Then Eddie grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in for a kiss.

_Okay. So this was-_

_Nah, fuck it._

Richie opened his mouth and immediately started trying to swallow Eddie’s tongue whole, and Eddie, to his shock and delight, seemed completely down with the idea and in fact seemed pretty ready to let his tongue set up shop in Richie’s mouth and never leave. When they broke for air, and because Ben was still kind of screaming, Eddie was grinning up at Richie with a kind of manic glee. And Richie couldn’t find it in him not to grin back.

“Holy fuck, dude,” Richie whispered.

“Eddie?! But- Eddie!??” Ben screamed. “What-?!?!”

“It’s me, Ben,” Eddie told him, without moving from Richie’s arms. Richie beamed down at him. He was holding Eddie in his arms! Eddie had just kissed him! And he hadn’t had to feed Eddie his blood or anything! “I think… I think Richie… killed. Whatever it was- _It_ was, still inside me. It’s gone now.”

Ben stood between both of them, staring between them. “Eddie. I- Okay. But! What??” He gestured vaguely.

“Richie’s gay. And talks a lot,” Eddie explained. He turned and glared at Richie. “Especially when you can’t talk back.”

“You remember,” Richie whispered, wiping a thumb across Eddie’s cheek. Across the scar from Bowers’ knife.

“I remember,” Eddie told him with a grin. “I remember everything.”

Then Eddie’s face turned green.

“Oh, shit. I remember everything.”

Eddie broke away from Richie and raced for the sink, reaching it just in time to start puking his guts out. Richie winced and debated whether he could get away with a reassuring hand on Eddie’s back or if he should just wait on the sidelines.

“This isn’t because of you!” Eddie shouted between hurls. “I fucking swear!” More hurling. “It’s because of all the fucking bodies I ate _oh my God I’m a fucking cannibal_.”

“No bud I totally get it! That’s fine! You puke it all out, buddy! I’ll be here to make out with that mouth again as soon as you’re done!”

“You’re fucking disgusting!” More puking. “This is still just because of the cannibalism, I’m not puking at you, Richie!”

“I know babe!”

“Don’t call me-” Eddie puked some more. “babe!”

Richie snorted and threw a thumb over his shoulder at Eddie as he winked at Ben. “Well not if it’s going to garner that kind of reaction, am I right?” Ben was not amused.

“Richie.”

“ _Two_ bodies,” Richie explained. “And we never murdered anybody! Well, Eddie murdered Tom, a little, but it really was self-defense!”

“ _Oh God,”_ Eddie moaned, followed by a fresh wave of puking.

“Tom attacked me!” Richie defended him. “I was dead meat! Eddie saved my life!”

“ _I ate his intestines,”_ Eddie moaned from inside the sink.

“Yeah you did, buddy.” Richie turned back to Ben. “And Steve really did trip and bash his head open. Completely on his own.”

“Richie, please,” Eddie cried.

“Sorry dude. I still love you. Even after watching you eat fingers like Burger King Chicken Fries.”

It was impressive that Eddie had anything in his stomach left to puke. It was probably just gag reflex puking up air, at this point.

“He really did,” Richie explained to Ben. He frowned, grief overwhelming him for a moment. “Trip, I mean. Steve did. It was fucking awful. But it was an accident. Really.”

“Really,” Eddie confirmed, finally lifting his head from the sink. He wiped his mouth off with a paper towel before storming from the kitchen. “I need to brush my teeth. And take a shower. Or five. Don’t wait up.”

Richie grinned as he watched him go. He was _totally_ going to wait up.

“Wait,” Ben said, interrupting Richie’s thoughts before they could get much more x-rated. “Start from the beginning. Eddie’s been with you since Derry? For months?”

* * *

Two hours later Eddie was clean and had chugged about half a bottle of mouthwash and made his grand reappearance in the living room with Ben and Richie, dressed in one of Richie’s too-big t-shirts and with his hair still damp and unbrushed. He snapped his fingers at Ben.

“Hey, so: could you give us the apartment for a couple hours? I think technically I’m not married anymore, so…” He gestured at Richie and left it there.

“Oh, uh-” Ben pushed himself awkwardly up from the couch. “Yeah, uh. I could pick us up some dinner?”

“Sure, whatever,” Eddie said, stalking purposefully towards Richie.

 _Holy shit he’s going to make out with me some more_.

“You know, you’re not legally dead,” Richie pointed out. “Just missing. So I think technically-”

“You want to get into that right now or do you want to suck my-” Eddie trailed off, sputtering. A blush rose high on his cheeks. _Oh my God. I love him so much_.

“Couldn’t say it,” Richie observed.

“Shut up!”

“It’s alright,” Richie told him, crowding in. Eddie had to tilt his head up, chin jutting out, so he could keep glaring at him. Richie pressed his thumb to that chin, just because he loved it so. “I think I get the idea.”

* * *

“Shit, you know what this means?” Eddie said. They were all sitting on the floor of Richie’s living room, getting absolutely shit-faced. Richie grabbed the bottle of bourbon from Eddie and drank straight from it. Eddie made a face, but Richie made a face right back, because it wasn’t like their tongues hadn’t just explored _every_ nook and cranny of each other’s bodies.

“What?” Ben asked, good sport that he was.

“Maybe I’m not the only one It infected,” Eddie speculated. “What if… What if _all_ of us were infected like that? Like Mike said, we had a virus in us.”

“Are you saying we’re all gonna be zombies when we die?” Richie mused. “Because that fucking rocks, I’d make a killer zombie.”

“No, asshole. I mean: One of us is still dead.”

Richie’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, Stan!” He smacked Eddie on the arm.

“Yeah, I fucking know!” Eddie said, hitting him right back. “What if this shit would work on Stan?!”

“Uh, guys?” Ben tried to interject.

“Do you think we gotta do the whole ‘Audrey two’ part first?” Richie thought out loud. “Or can we just jump straight to the stabbing?”

“I think the zombie shit was feeding It, not me,” Eddie told him. “Making It stronger.”

“So then straight to stabbing.”

“Guys?” Ben tried again.

“Yeah. Why not?! What harm could it do? Guy’s already dead, right?”

“Yeah!” Richie echoed him. “What’s a few more cranial holes in a corpse!”

“Guys!” Ben shouted. Richie snorted and Eddie scowled at him. “Are you really talking about exhuming Stan’s body and stabbing it?”

“‘Exhuming,’” Richie mocked, putting on a fancy-guy voice. “Fuck no. I’m talking about fucking grave robbing.”

“Do you love Stan or not?” Eddie shot at him. Ben spluttered.

“Wha- No, of course I- Guys-”

“Got us three seats to Atlanta tomorrow morning,” Richie announced, holding his phone.

“First class?” Eddie prompted, eyes narrow.

“Of course, lover.”

“Yeah, veto ‘lover.’”

“Shouldn’t we call the others?” Ben pleaded. “Mike, Bill… Bev…”

Eddie shrugged. “Call whoever you want-”

“-Just don’t call me late for dinner! Yuk yuk yuk!”

Eddie made a face at Richie but he couldn’t tamp down that smile, hard as he tried. Richie beamed at him.

“-but tomorrow afternoon I plan on being in Atlanta, saving my friend’s life.”

“Yeah!” Richie shouted, high-fiving Eddie enthusiastically. Except he slipped a little, maybe on purpose, and then he was making out with Eddie enthusiastically. Alongside them Ben made a disapproving noise and stood up.

“Uh, well, if we’re going to fly out tomorrow morning, I need to drink some water and go to bed,” Ben said too-loudly.

Richie waved him off, still focused on the way Eddie jabbed his tongue into his mouth like he was _fighting_ , which Richie loved. He was just in the middle of pushing Eddie down onto the living room floor when-

“So I’ll just take Eddie’s room, I guess? Which one is it? This one?”

Eddie and Richie’s lips separated with a loud _smack_. They stared at each other in horror.

“Ben!” Richie shouted.

“No, hey, Ben, hang on-” Eddie scrambled to jump up.

“Ben, buddy! Hey!”

Ben’s scream filled the apartment before either Eddie or Richie had even managed to sprint past the couch. _Well, what’s one more traumatic murder-room amongst friends_?

* * *

“Guys, I _really_ think we should have at least talked to his wife about this first…”

“And said what?” Richie asked, huffing as he shoveled another pile of dirt off to the side. “Oh hey there Mrs. Uris, sorry to bother you, but we’re about to dig up your husband’s body and stab him in the face a couple times to see if that brings him back to life.”

“Yeah, guys, I wanted to revisit that,” Ben pointed out. “Are we _really_ sure we need to _stab_ him? What if… uh…”

Eddie stopped shoveling for a minute to wipe sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. He was fucking beauty in motion. All sweaty in his little workout sweat-wicking shirt. Gardening gloves too big for his hands, still trying to shovel just as much dirt as Richie had (and not managing it, the gorgeous, tiny Napoleon complex).

“Hey Ben: who’s the expert on how to come back to life after an It-related death?” Eddie asked.

Richie grinned and pointed at Eddie, raising his eyebrows at Ben. For his part Ben just sighed and threw up his hands.

“I just don’t think we should be _grave-robbing_ ,” Ben hissed.

“Do you love Stan or not?!” Eddie asked, shoveling a particularly large pile of dirt out of the grave.

“Yeah, Ben! Do you love Stan or not?” Richie echoed with glee. Then he shoveled a pile of dirt twice the size of Eddie’s. He even flung it out with one hand. Eddie squinted at him like he knew _exactly_ what Richie was doing, but now wasn’t the time to argue about it. Later. When they were getting filthy and sweaty for totally _different_ reasons. Possibly in the Uris’ guest room, who knew.

“I- Of course I-” Ben sputtered.

“Then pick up the damn shovel and help us dig, Ben!”

“Yeah!” Richie agreed, tossing a shovel of dirt onto Ben’s shoes. “Help Eddie dig! He’s just a little guy! He can’t dig six feet down, his arms won’t be able to reach!”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

“Oh what, did you grow four inches overnight?”

“I’ll show _you_ four inches.”

“ _Yeah_ you will!”

“Oh- okay, fine!” Ben hissed. He frog-stepped his way into the grave, grabbing Eddie’s shovel away from him. “I’ll help! Just stop… that.”

“I think Ben’s homophobic,” Richie told Eddie as he clambered from the grave.

Eddie snorted as he sat down on the night-cooled grass, chugging a bottle of water. “I think _you’re_ homophobic, Richie. I mean, have you ever _heard_ his material, Ben?”

“Hey!” Richie whined. “That was just deeply self-hating! That’s what all good comedians do!”

“Homophobe.”

Richie sighed dramatically as he shoveled. “I guess I’ll just have to make it up to the gay community. Beg them for forgiveness. On my knees. Over and over and over-”

Eddie giggled and threw a clump of dirt at him. Richie whined.

“Hey! Don’t _add_ dirt to the hole! We’re trying to dig up Stan before we get caught!”

“Well then dig faster,” Eddie told him.

“I wish the others were here,” Ben moaned. “I always _hated_ playing third wheel to the Eddie-and-Richie show.”

“That’s because you’re a good boy,” Richie told him. They were actually making much faster progress now that it was him and Ben doing the digging instead of him and Eddie.

“Hey!” Eddie whined. “I was a good boy!”

“Bullshit,” Richie and Ben said together. Richie snickered and high-fived Ben.

Richie slammed the shovel down and hit something solid. Oh-ho-ho! Pay dirt!

“Yo, Ben!” Richie turned the shovel over in his hands, scraping away at the dirt. Sure enough, just a few more inches down he managed to expose the lid of a coffin. Eddie went for their duffle bag, pulling out crowbars and axes and tossing them down into the hole.

“You’ve got to dig around the sides,” Eddie told them. “Otherwise you won’t have the leverage.”

“Hey, who’s the engineer in this grave?” Richie reminded Eddie. “And who’s doing all the heavy lifting?”

“Someone’s gotta be the brains of the operation, asshole,” Eddie fired back. Then he flipped open a switchblade, crouched watching them work above the hole. Ben swallowed audibly.

“Guys, I still don’t know-” Ben whined. “You’re just going to... stab him in the face…”

“Richie stabbed me in the face!” Eddie pointed out. “And look at me! I’m fine!”

“Yeah!” Richie agreed, dutifully shoveling dirt out from the sides of the coffin because when Eddie was right he was right. “He’s fine!”

“I’ve got a pulse and everything!”

“He can maintain an erection for four hours!”

“Don’t help, you fucking dick!”

“ _You’re_ the ‘ _fucking dick_ ,’” Richie shot back with an eyebrow waggle. Eddie jabbed the switchblade at him.

“Fucking _dig_ , moron, so I can stab our friend in the face.”

“This feels wrong,” Ben groaned.

“Do you love Stan or not?!” Richie teased him.

“Stop asking me if I love Stan!” Ben shouted. “Of course I love Stan! That’s why I don’t want to stab him in the face!”

Eddie whistled at them and twirled a finger. “Pop that lid, guys. Let’s go.”

Richie obligingly picked up a crowbar and started jamming it into the side of the lid. When that didn’t seem to move much he tossed it to Ben and picked up the hatchet and started wailing away on the side of the lid. Ben, for all his trepidations, still picked up the crowbar and started leveraging it up.

“You didn’t even go to a doctor to check you out,” Ben said to Eddie.

Eddie giggled. “Why would I go to a doctor? I feel great.”

“Yeah!” Richie defended him. “He feels great!”

“I fucked Richie like three times yesterday!”

“And oral, too!”

“I hate you guys so much,” Ben grunted. But he was leaning heavily on the crowbar, and with a groan, the lid moved. Richie jabbed his axe under the gap Ben had made and together they shoved the lid up enough that they were able to get their arms under it and _heave_ , lifting it up and off to lean against the side of the hole they’d dug.

Richie swallowed. Stan was wrapped in a white shroud, even over his face. Must be something Jewish, maybe? Carefully Richie untangled the shroud, pulling it back from Stan’s face, pushing it down enough that it was off his shoulders. He took a breath. Okay, so-

“Alright asshole, move!”

Eddie shoulder-checked Richie, catching him off guard so he was actually able to shove him aside, a little bit. The feral little dick had hopped down into the grave like Spider-Man, and now he sat on top of Stan’s chest, switchblade raised high. Ben reached out a hand, trying one last time “Hey, wait, are you sure we shouldn’t-” But then Eddie brought the knife down and stabbed it straight through Stan’s eye.

Nothing happened. Eddie frowned, wrenched the knife out, then stabbed Stan a half-dozen more times for good measure. Richie watched the proceedings with interest. He _had_ stabbed Eddie a bunch of times: maybe it took more than one stabbing, for whatever reason. Ben was scrunched up against the side of the hole, holding his hands over his mouth.

Eddie sat back, breathing a little heavy, shaking the knife out in his hand as he studied Stan’s now heavily-lacerated face.

“Huh,” Richie mused. “Thought that’d work.”

And then. A shudder. The lacerations disappeared. Stan’s eyes opened. Ben screamed, scrambling against the dirt side of the hole. Richie and Eddie leaned in, watching Stan slowly shake out his stiff limbs. He had to shimmy a little to pull his arms out of the shroud that wrapped around his body. But he managed it after a minute.

Stan sat up in his coffin and looked from one man to the other. Finally his eyes settled on Eddie, holding the knife in his hand.

“Did you just stab me in the head?”

“Yeah!” Eddie shouted, just a touch manic.

Stan nodded, looking between him, and Richie, and Ben, and then back to Eddie again.

“I cannot fucking believe that worked. Alright, help me out. I’ve got to go see my wife.”


End file.
